Beware The Judderman
by greendaypumpkin
Summary: A remote hunt takes a sinister turn when Dean is badly injured and their presence draws some unwanted attention.
1. Chapter 1

A.N. I'm not a doctor so you might have to suspend your disbelief in the purpose of entertainment. Sorry for any mistakes, despite checking it repeatedly, I'm sure the second I post it, I'll notice loads of errors. The title is from an advert for Metz Schnapps that is totally awesome and creepy and you should definitely check it out on youtube if you don't know it. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy and will review :).

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_Beware the Judderman my dear when the moon is fat._

It was almost silent.

It had started just after midnight; it was hard to believe that much snow could fall in twenty minutes. It fell from the sky in thick flurries, swiftly blanketing the earth in a soft white canvas. The darkness of the night was illuminated by the gentle white crystals, and the moon shining through the bare branches of the trees.

It was perfect. Like something from a Christmas card. Just the stars twinkling gently through the thick snowflakes, the bright full moon, the trees, the church, the untouched snow. It was perfect, far away from civilisation, just the pure beauty of nature.

The snow fell quickly, muffling the world, hushing everything to sleep with its softness.

He could look at it forever, just stay there in the snow, blinking it from his lashes, treasuring this perfect moment when the world was at peace. He kept coming back to that word. Perfect.

And it was perfect. It could be so perfect, so perfect with the pure white snow, and the blissful silence, if it wasn't for his brother yammering continuously in his ear. On those Christmas cards there was never someone talking and ruining the moment. It was just a perfect moment, frozen in time.

He wished his brother would shut up, just for a little while, just so they could cherish the perfect moment they got so few of.

He gazed at the view in front of him; it did look just like a Christmas card. The silence, the thick white snow. His brother was ruining the silence of course, and he was pretty sure that on Christmas cards the snow wasn't smeared with red.

Of course the trouble with perfect pictures is that you only see one tiny section of the scene. You don't see the guy with the camera or any of the people that tagged along with him. All you see is the world, frozen in one perfect moment. So as long as he kept his eyes on his perfect moment, then he wouldn't have to think about how they messed up the world behind the camera.

He'd managed to zone out much of what was being said, he was more irritated that his brother seemed determined to destroy one of his only moments of peace. But then a hand was on his cheek, turning his face away from the perfect scene, it slid away to his right and was replaced by a shaggy head, and big brown eyes. The falling snow behind his brother gave the impression of a halo. He scoffed at the irony and made himself focus on what was being said to him.

"Come on Dean! Stay with me!"

"Huh?"

"Damn it Dean you have to stay awake! Just keep talking to me!"

"What the hell are you talking about Sam? I don't have to do anything." He tried to turn his head back to the right, to get back to the peace, where he didn't have to think about the sickening bloody trail behind them. But a sharp slap to the face brought him back to Sam, the retort died on his tongue when he saw the look in his brother's eyes. He was frightened.

"Just stay with me, ok? Promise me!"

"Fine! I promise."

He wondered what his brother was getting so pissy about, always trying to ruin his good time.

"Damn it Dean you lost a lot of blood."

That wasn't aimed at him, more Sam venting out of worry and panic. Reluctantly Dean glanced down at what Sam was doing, his shaking hands busying themselves around Dean's body.

Huh, there really was a lot of blood, he was pretty irritated that it had ruined the picturesque scene, but the snow was falling fast so maybe it'd cover it. He couldn't actually tell where the blood was coming from; it was all just a sickly red mess. He couldn't feel any pain, couldn't feel much of anything come to think of it, but Sam seemed to know what was going on so that was ok.

It occurred to him that he was laying down, he didn't remember lying down, shouldn't he be cold? Lying on the ground in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a snowstorm should make him cold shouldn't it? Maybe he was, maybe he'd ask Sam.

"Sam?"

"It's ok Dean, don't worry, everything'll be fine!"

Sam didn't seem to be listening to him.

"Ssssammy?"

He was rewarded with a distracted "Yeah Dean."

"Why am I on the ground?...Should I be cold?"

Sam paused at that, glanced at his brother's face, muttered a quick expletive and began shrugging out of his jacket. Dean tried to push himself up on his elbows.

"No dude, it's ok... I'm not cold, just uh... wondered if I should be. But I'm not so it's ok." The waning strength in his arms gave out and he flopped onto his back in the snow. Sam was being eerily quiet, kneeling beside Dean with his jacket in his hands, as if not sure what to do with it.

"Dean, I don't..."

Great, Sam was freaking out. On some level he knew that if Sam quit then he was totally screwed.

"What's wrong Sammy?"

"Y...you've lost a lot of blood and the um... I can't leave you to get help...'cause if I leave you then you'll..."

"I'll what? You worry too much Sam, why don't..." He trailed off as his gaze shifted back to the perfect view "I like the snow Sam. It makes everything quiet and...white..." He wanted Sam to enjoy the simple moment too, but for some reason couldn't quite convey what he wanted to say. Maybe he was cold.

He felt like he was in a giant marshmallow-y bed. His eyes were suddenly heavy, on some level an inner voice was screaming at him to stay awake, but sleep was so very tempting.

Xxx

_Earlier_

"It's going to snow."

"Well then quit playing weatherman and let's finish up so we're not stuck out here when it starts."

"Dude I like the snow."

"Yeah I know, shoving snowballs down my back and laughing makes it pretty damn obvious."

"Aw Sammy you're no fun."

Sam grumbled and trudged forward. He couldn't be bothered to give Dean any more ammunition. Truth be told, Dean turned back into a little kid when it snowed, making him damn annoying to hunt with. They'd already clipped the yeti, and it had loped off back to its hideout. It should be easy to finish it off, it was bleeding badly, hopefully it had slunk off somewhere to die, but they couldn't take that chance, had to make sure the job was done or they'd just end up dragging their asses back here when more mangled bodies turned up.

Sam glanced up at the darkening sky. Crap. It was going to be dark soon and even if they killed it quickly, they'd more than likely end up walking back in the dark and the snow. He was totally calling first shower when they got back, Dean would probably run around in the parking lot anyway, knowing him, building a snow penis or pelting a small child with snowballs.

Eventually the blood trail they'd been following stopped. Just stopped, with nothing to suggest where it had gone. In silence they looked at each other in bewilderment, guns at the ready, both alert for any change in the surroundings. There was nothing.

"What gives?" Hissed Dean "It can't just vanish."

"I don't know, but it can't be good."

"Maybe it died and turned into dust like Buffy?"

"Seriously? Do you really think now is the best time for you..."

A rush of brown fur suddenly hurtled out of the undergrowth, knocking Dean's gun away and taking Sam down with it. Sam hit the ground with a bump, forcing the air out of his lungs, a split-second later he found the incredible weight of the stinking yeti crushing down on him. He was helpless to do anything as the creature reared back with claws ready to strike; Sam braced himself for the feeling of tearing flesh when a bullet embedded itself in the yeti's shoulder.

In his panic to divert its attention from Sam, Dean had just fired anywhere and wasn't prepared for the beast to round on him in anger, batting him away with one sweep of a paw, Dean grunted as he felt dirty claws puncture his midsection before he was lifted off his feet and found himself hurtling through the air.

The yeti was on him in an instant, digging its claws into soft flesh, his body screamed in pain as it dawned on him that he was going to be eaten. But the yeti didn't even have time to open its mouth before a shot to the back of the head sent its brains exploding over Dean's face.

Dean and the gun fell to the ground in unison and Sam dropped to his knees a second later, jumping over the body of the yeti.

"Dean? Dean, talk to me!"

Dean groaned and instinctively clutched at his stomach. Sam tried to pry his hands away to get a look at the wounds but Dean held on, stubborn as always.

"Dean, you have to let me see." Sam gently pulled his brothers shaking hands away from his stomach, his own hands were trembling as his Dean's blood pumped out over them. It wasn't that bad though. Well it was bad, but he'd seen a lot worse. He fumbled for his cell phone, typical, no signal. Dean's was the same. He fought down a surge of panic and tried to think. They couldn't stay here, the hope that someone would stumble upon them was miniscule at best. He also couldn't leave Dean and go for help, it was miles back to the car, even further to the nearest town, his brother was in shock, he'd lost a lot of blood and it was nearly midnight. Their earlier conversation came screaming back to him, it was going to snow, he could feel it in the air, and even if it didn't, it was freezing. His brother wouldn't survive, waiting for Sam to get back with help.

There was only one thing for it, they had to move. At least until they got a signal, Sam could go solo but he daren't leave Dean alone. Stripping himself of his shirt he tore it into strips, and secured them around the places Dean was bleeding worst.

Dean was shaking badly, his skin pale and sweaty**.** His eyes somewhat glazed over, breath coming in short pants, the blood spattered on his face was in stark comparison to his waxy complexion.

"Ok, Dean, I know this sucks man but we have to move."

Dean's eyes settled on Sam's face "K Sssammy."

Sam gingerly pulled Dean to his feet, mindful of his injuries, trying not to aggravate the wounds any more than was necessary. As soon as Dean's legs straightened beneath him, they tried to crumple again, Sam was fast though, grabbing him round the waist, and dragging Dean's uninjured arm across his shoulders. He curled his hand around Dean's middle to keep as much pressure as he could in an attempt to stem the bleeding.

Slowly they began to shuffle their way through the woods, Sam more or less carrying his brother. Dean was doing his best to walk but every step felt like it was splitting him open.

It started to snow. Thick fast flakes descended onto the earth. Sam bit back a groan of anger, shaking his head and blinking to clear his vision.

He had to keep going otherwise he'd freak out completely; they were stranded in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, in the snow. Dean was leaving a horrific trail of red behind them; the amount of blood he was losing did nothing to ease Sam's worry.

They'd been walking for about fifteen minutes, making agonisingly slow progress. The snow had fallen so fast it looked like it had been snowing for hours, trudging through half a foot of it was slowing their speed even more.

Just as an old abandoned church yard came into sight, the last of Dean's strength gave out, his legs completely buckled and Sam lost his tenuous grip on his brother and they fell to the ground, Sam doing his best to take them down as smoothly as possible.

Sam went into autopilot, trying to control Dean's bleeding, and assessing what he needed to do. He glanced back the way they had come, the bloody path they'd made.

Sam tried to convince himself that the blood looked worse because of the snow, that there wasn't actually that much of it, but it did little to ease the panic threatening to consume him. He didn't know what to do, Dean was gazing off into the distance, and he couldn't tell if the shaking was from the shock or the cold or both. He needed to deal with Dean's injuries, he needed to keep him warm, he needed to get help, he needed to have been faster with the yeti, he needed to be bitching at Dean for shoving a snowball down his back, and he needed for this not to be happening.

Dean was fading, he could feel his blood draining out onto his hands and there was nothing he could do about it.

_Think Sam think!_ He had to make Dean stay awake.

"Come on Dean! Stay with me!"

"Huh?"

"Damn it Dean you have to stay awake! Just keep talking to me!"

"What the hell are you talking about Sam? I don't have to do anything."

Typical Dean to remember his attitude problem when he was practically dancing with the reaper, his brother was such a stubborn ass.

"Just stay with me, ok? Promise me!"

"Fine! I promise."

Satisfied that Dean wouldn't pass out on him just yet, he returned doing his best to staunch the blood flow in the nearly pitch black night, he was briefly grateful for the fact that the snow seemed to provide some illumination.

"Damn it Dean you lost a lot of blood."

He tried to concentrate on examining Dean as much as he could, he was so fixated on trying not to think about the hopelessness of their situation that he barely noticed Dean trying to talk to him.

"Sam?"

"It's ok Dean, don't worry, everything'll be fine!"

"Ssssammy?"

"Yeah Dean."

"Why am I on the ground?...Should I be cold?"

Sam stopped, his eyes shot up to his brother's face. Dean's eyes were barely focused; he was lying on the freezing wet ground as snow kept piling up around him. He'd been so busy focusing on the bleeding, that he'd barely considered the effects of Dean's weakened body being exposed to such cruel elements. He tugged off his jacket, he immediately missed its warmth, but he'd survive with a cold, Dean could die. He watched as Dean attempted to push himself up onto his elbows and sink back down almost immediately.

"No dude, it's ok... I'm not cold, just uh... wondered if I should be. But I'm not so it's ok."

Dean's words chilled Sam to the bone, there were numerous reasons why Dean wasn't feeling the cold, it didn't necessarily mean hypothermia, but whatever it was it wasn't good. He paused with his jacket in his hands, he wanted to cover Dean with it, but he needed access to Dean's injuries. The panic threatened to swallow him up.

"Dean, I don't..."

"What's wrong Sammy?"

"Y...you've lost a lot of blood and the um... I can't leave you to get help...'cause if I leave you then you'll..."

"I'll what? You worry too much Sam, why don't..." Sam watched as Dean's focus slipped "I like the snow Sam. It makes everything quiet and...white..."

Xxx

"DEAN!" The sharp palm against his cheek stung even more from the cold, bringing him back to awareness. Despite the smarting sensation on his cheek it was an effort to wrench his eyes open.

Sam's face was a mixture of panic, despair and annoyance. He also seemed to be down to one layer of clothing, weird. Especially with the snow, Dean did like the snow. A sudden memory flashed into his mind of one winter when he was 22, the combination of alcohol, a hot chick, and the childish thrill of snow found them both running through the streets in their underwear. His Dad had ripped him a new one but the simple stupid joy kept him grinning for days. Maybe that had something to do with why Sam was taking off his clothes, he glanced around but could see no sign of a girl in a bikini and boots. And Sam didn't seem to be drunk, Sam wouldn't drink when they were... what were they doing again?

The deep gashes in his arm reminded him. Yeti, they were hunting a yeti. The thought caused him to giggle, which in turn elicited another worried look from Sam. He thought that maybe he should be worried too, Sam looked worried, and it was definitely the kind of thing that would normally send him into panic mode, but for some reason he just felt kind of out of place. Separate from the world. It was probably a bad thing, but right now it was just tranquil. He could see Sam's breath making smoky tendrils in the air, his breath wasn't making such cool patterns; it was stuttery and didn't look good.

His body seemed like it was trying to tell his brain something, it was there in the back of his mind, jumping up and down, waving its arms and screaming at him to pay attention, to stop dicking around and focus on the major problem at hand. But it was hard to hear that little voice over the much louder one telling him to sleep, that it would be such a good idea to go to sleep in the snow, like a fluffy cloud. He liked that idea, just like taking a nap on a cloud.

Another vicious slap caused him to gasp and open his eyes.

"DEAN IF YOU DO NOT STAY AWAKE YOU WILL DIE! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?" Damn Sammy was loud, he could do with a nap of his own. Not here though, because if Sam took a nap here then he would freeze, it was a bad idea for his little brother to fall asleep in the snow, he decided to voice this fact.

"Iza baaaaad... 'dea you... sle'p...snoooow s'mmy." That didn't sound quite as eloquent as he intended and now Sam looked even more worried, and he was moving fast, scurrying behind Dean and hauling him up to lean against his warm solid chest.

Dean gave a cry of pain at the sudden movement, a dull fire seemed to rip across his abdomen and shock him back to his senses. The little voice in the back of his mind had rugby tackled the deceptive soothing voice and was now screaming bloody murder, telling him in no uncertain terms that this was bad, this was very very bad and _you moron you're going to die out here and there's nothing you can do about it because all that blood you lost has made you weak as a kitten and that little siesta in the freezing snow was pretty much signing your own death warrant._

"Sammmmm!" Dean tried to clutch at his brothers fingers, panic surging through him, but his hands wouldn't cooperate, they were slippery with his own blood and he couldn't get his body to obey him. His breath was coming in short sharp gasps, the cold making his chest seize up, his lungs objecting to the bitter air.

He felt a hand close around his own shaking one, he couldn't tell how cold Sam was, he was only grateful for the small amount of comfort.

"G-g-gonna d-d-die Sammy."

"No Dean you're not going to die, we're gonna fix you up, you'll be ok."

Sam sounded like he was having a hard time convincing himself never mind his brother.

"Sssshit S-s-am you s-s-suck at lying."

"Don't try to talk Dean, save your energy."

"F-f-f-for what? Hate to b-b-break it to you but I-I-I'm screwed."

"Don't you say that, you'll be ok, I'll think of something."

"Y-y-you'll catch your d-death without your c-c-coat Sammy." Dean tried to laugh but it caught in the back of his throat and turned into a racking cough, to his dismay spurting blood onto the ground in front of him, he hoped Sam hadn't noticed, the kid didn't need anything else to worry about.

"Shit Dean shit!"

Wishful thinking.

"Do you think you can make it into the church, it'll at least be more sheltered?"

The church wasn't that far away, about a hundred metres, but to Dean it seemed like a hundred miles, not to mention the damn gate and graveyard they had to manoeuvre their way through. He was pretty sure that there was no way he could make it, but Sam was determined and already trying to stand him up.

Dean wanted to crack some sort of joke to lighten the mood, but he found he couldn't do much more than clutch desperately at his midsection, and draw one shaky breath after another. Sam was essentially carrying him and despite all his mocking, he was suddenly grateful that his baby brother was more giant than man.

When his legs gave out altogether, Sam didn't falter, just checked that he was awake, flipped him onto his back and hooked his hands under his arms, the movement sent a jolt of pain through Dean's injured shoulder and he let out a gasp but Sam just dragged Dean backwards so he could watch his life bleed out all over the middle of nowhere. Sam nudged the small gate open with his butt and kept on going, Dean watched as silent gravestones slid slowly past, the dead, finally forgotten after so many years were the only witnesses to their plight. Stone statues, angels with their heads bowed and solemn headstones send a shiver of foreboding up his spine. He felt like they were being watched. _That'll just be the reaper come to claim your soul Dean, quit being so paranoid._

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Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed and will take the time to review. I'm hoping to have the next chapter up soon.


	2. Chapter 2

A.N. Sorry for the slight delay, working this week has been exhausting. And then I've been unable to actually upload the next chapter but I think a few people have had problems with that.

I had a couple of problems getting this to upload without a couple of things disappearing for some reason. But it seems to be ok now, if there's anything glaringly obvious please let me know.

I hope you enjoy the new chapter and will pretty please leave a review.

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_Sharp of tongue and spindle limbed he is, and cunning._

Sam leant his brother against the stone arch and fumbled with the door handles, his fingers were so numb from the cold he had trouble twisting the old metal knob. He was mildly surprised when it actually opened under his grasp, but in all fairness it was very unlikely that there'd be trespassers out here. He dragged the uncooperative lump that was his brother over the threshold and shut the heavy door against the elements. It wasn't much warmer inside, in fact it was still incredibly cold, but at least they were protected from the snow that was showing no signs of letting up.

He was pretty sure Dean was in shock, his skin had taken on a sickly shade of pale, and he was trembling so badly that Sam didn't think he'd be able to stitch him up even if he had the necessary equipment. At least he was hoping it was shock, shock was easier to deal with than hypothermia. But he was pretty sure it was a little of both.

Dean was leaning against the stone wall next to the door, both hands were pressed against his stomach with a strength that Sam didn't think was possible in his current predicament, but Dean kept his hands clamped there like he was trying to hold himself together.

They might be inside but they were still so far up shit creek that even if they had a paddle it'd be useless. OK. He had to stop, had to think, he had to slow down and figure this out, Dean was depending on him.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Think. Check Dean. Check for things that might be useful. Check Dean. Save Dean. Make Dean do the laundry for a month as payback for the brand new ulcer he was currently developing. Find Light.

His eyes searched the gloom, who would put a church all the way out here anyway? Still, it looked like it had been well cared for. It probably had sentimental meaning for the nearest town. If it was still in use then maybe they'd be in luck. He fumbled along the wall by the door and his heart leapt in dim hope as he found a light switch. With bated breath he flipped the switch; relieved when faded dull light crackled on overhead at least one thing had gone their way. _Thank you health and safety and electric lighting._ It still wasn't perfect but it was something.

Check Dean. Sam dropped down to Dean's level. He tried not to let himself dwell on Dean's shaky breathing, and told himself that when his fingers ghosted over his brother's wrist that the weak pulse was just because his fingers were so cold that he couldn't feel it properly. He couldn't let himself freak out, if he did then Dean was as good as dead.

"Dean, let me see." He tried to prise his brothers hands away from his abdomen, but Dean held on with surprising fierceness.

"Nuh-uh Sammy."

"Come on man. I have to look, let go."

Dean shot him a withering glare, and Sam was grateful that Dean still seemed to have the frame of mind to still be a stubborn jackass. Dean grudgingly let Sam ease his shaking hands away but kept them hovering nearby so he could clamp them back down if he needed to.

Dean was a mess, the fabric that was once his shirt was now sodden with blood, way too much blood. He gently removed the makeshift bandages and tore open what remained of Dean's t-shirt. He couldn't see anything through all the blood. He swung the small backpack he'd been carrying off his shoulder and emptied it onto the stone floor. Not that there was much that could help, holy water, guns, the usual, the tiny first aid kit they kept at the bottom would have helped if they had a blister or a bite but band-aids and antiseptic cream weren't going to be much use.

He pressed a spare shirt he'd shoved in the backpack against Deans' stomach.

"Dean, I need you to keep pressure on this ok? I have to go find something to get that blood off so I can see what I'm doing ok?"

His only response was a slight nod of the head and another rasping inhalation of breath as the hands returned.

Sam wasted no time, he ran down the aisle head darting around urgently, trying to spot something that might be of any use. The place was bare; the pews stood silent and solemn and empty. It was only a small church, tiny really, but there was a door at the back, the handle turned with ease and he found himself in a small room, most likely where the Vicar's used to prepare before a service. It too was practically empty. But not quite. There was a water dispenser, an actual water dispenser, full of wonderful pure water. And _YES! _A first aid kit. Sam gave a quick prayer of thanks to the practical nature of whoever had left these wonderful things for him to find.

He wrenched the water container from its base and instantly dropped it, precious water sloshed out onto the floor. Sam cursed and righted it, thankful that not too much had been spilled. He dragged it through the door to where Dean was waiting.

Thankfully his brother was still conscious; Sam supposed he had shock to thank for that. Dean's movements were slow and sluggish and didn't respond or give any indication that he was listening to what Sam was telling him. Sam set about cleaning the blood away from Dean's stomach, the bleeding had slowed, Sam tried not to think that it was because Dean's heart wasn't beating as strongly.

When he got most of the excess blood cleaned up, he could see the wounds on his brother's abdomen more clearly. They weren't as bad as they could have been, but they still weren't good. And no way in Hell did he have the resources to patch him up here, he needed a hospital. He couldn't tell how deep the cuts were without digging around inside his brother and there was no way he was about to do that. But they didn't look too deep or too wide; the main problem was the long, dirty gashes. He fumbled through the first aid kit he'd found, hoping against hope for a needle, thread, anything to stitch up the wounds. But the best he came up with was a roll of bandage, a slightly pathetic roll at that, not the heavy duty stuff they desperately needed.

Throughout all Sam's ministrations, Dean had remained quiet. The only signs he was still alive was his shaking and horrible wet rasping breaths drawn from struggling lungs. The way Dean seemed to be staring into the distance was weirding Sam out no end, he actually had to glace over his shoulder a couple of times to make sure that there was nothing sneaking up behind him.

"Dean?"

Dull green eyes moved slowly to meet Sam's. Dean's way of saying _I'm listening and you'd better have figured out one hell of a plan geek boy._

"Dean I need to get you sat up a bit ok?" Sam didn't wait for an answer, just gently helped Dean slide up into more of a sitting position so he could start wrapping the bandages around his midsection. Sam bit back a groan when the cuts started to bleed again at the movement, but Dean didn't need anything else to worry about. After what seemed like forever, he managed to get Dean's stomach bandaged to his satisfaction, well as satisfied as he could be in this situation.

Dean's shoulder didn't seem too bad, but he did his best to stem the blood flow with the rest of the bandages and set about gently wriggling Dean into the last of the spare t-shirts and covering him in all the clothing he had available. Then finally he sank back against the wall next to his brother to think.

"Cold Sammy."

"I know Dean." Sam scooted closer to his brother and stretched an arm around his shoulders, hoping that body heat would help a little. He himself was down to only a thin t-shirt and was shivering like crazy, his fingers so numb he couldn't feel anything. But Dean had lost too much blood, Dean had been lying in the snow, Dean probably had hypothermia on top of everything else, Dean was going to die if they didn't get help soon.

"Any...b-bright ideas... college boy?"

"I'll figure something out Dean it'll be fine."

"Oh good... was worried t-t-there for...s-s-second." Dean gave what started as a weak chuckle and worked its way up to a racking cough. Sam kept a tight hold on Dean as he bent double, one hand across his middle, wincing at each cough and praying that he didn't do any more damage to his injuries.

The coughing fit eventually subsided and Dean leaned back heavily against his brother, both relishing the slight warmth and comfort.

"The way I figure it, we have two options." Sam started "One, you stay here while I go for help."

"Two?"

"Two, we both go, I'll help you walk, and we get help."

"...Don't...like either... of those 'dea's m-much."

"Me either Dean but I don't have a third."

Sam couldn't tell if Dean was fully registering what he was saying, his eyes kept drifting off to the head of the church. Sam was pretty sure that he was going to have to make this decision himself and he really didn't want to, he was terrified that he'd make the worst decision.

"Sam?" Dean dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

"Yeah?"

"He's kinda creeping me out."

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

"Dude sat over there; get him to freaking move or something...s'w-weird."

Sam's heart leapt in his chest in panic as he followed Dean's gaze to the front of the church. There was no one there. They were alone.

"There's no one there man, the place is empty."

A scowl worked its way onto Dean's face, one that said _Don't treat me like I'm stupid Sam, I'm older and it's not cool to screw with your big brother when he knows best and is pretty much dying here._

"G-g-get _him_ to help S-s-s-sam."

Sam glanced around again worriedly; it was deserted, and so small that he'd know if there was anyone here, unless they were hiding in one of the pews or something. He turned Dean's head towards him and scrutinised his eyes, they were full of pain, fear, annoyance, and fatigue but they still had that cocky stubbornness to them. Was there someone there that he'd missed?

"Gerrof me." Dean let his head loll back to the front, his gaze settled on the same spot once again.

Sam lowered his voice "Tell me what you see Dean."

"N-n-not crazy."

"I know just humour me ok?"

Dean let out an annoyed sigh "S-s-s-second pew from front, dude with h-h-his h-h-head down. Not m-movin'. S'creepy."

Xxx

While Sam had been running around doing whatever a freaked out little brother does. Dean had been leaning up against the wall by the door, trying to urge his blood to stop departing his body. He liked his blood where it was, safely tucked up nice and cosy inside him and it damn well better stay there. He was tired, he was cold, he felt out of it, like the world was moving at different speeds, slowly, then too fast, then it was more a case of blink and you miss it. Things seemed to be happening in flashes and he couldn't remember what came in-between. One minute he was out in the snow, the next he was inside as someone somewhere turned the lights on. Then Sam was there, trying to make him let go, then Sam was gone but he wasn't worried because Sam had said something to him but he couldn't remember what.

He'd first noticed the man when he'd let his eyes drift shut, just for a minute, just while Sam was gone. He'd thought he could hear a noise from far away, a noise that didn't seem to belong and when he'd dragged his eyes open again, he was there. Sitting at the head of the church, head bowed as if in prayer, silent. He'd figured it was the Vicar or caretaker or something, someone Sam had found, who was now praying for his salvation. And then time had done another of its weird little flashes and Sam had been pouring water on him which he half expected to turn to ice when it hit his flesh, because he was sure he'd never been this cold before.

He'd not given the man much thought, it was only when Sam stopped fussing and started suggesting ways to get out of this epic mess they'd stepped in that it began to creep him out a bit. Normal people offered to help a potentially mortally wounded man, not just sit there ignoring him.

But now Sam was saying that he couldn't see him, maybe Sam was in shock or something.

"There's no one here but us" Sam was saying for what felt like the hundredth time. "Dean we can't just keep waiting here you need help. I'm going to go and I'll be back as soon as I can, just promise me you'll stay awake." Sam moved to stand up.

"NO!" Dean's hand shot out and grabbed onto Sam's arm with a strength he didn't know he possessed. "Sam, don't leave me here alone."

He could still see the man out of the corner of his eye; still see Sam, looking at him with that worried expression on his face. Something was wrong, very wrong; if his brain would just quit being so fuzzy then maybe he could figure out what it was.

Maybe it was the intensity in his eyes, or maybe Sam was just humouring him, but Sam eventually stopped chewing on his lip.

"I'm going to go check the place out ok? Just make sure it's safe?" He gently eased Dean's death grip off his arm and stood up. Dean watched as he made his way down the small church, scrutinising each pew as he went.

Dean's heart seemed to freeze as Sam approached the pew where the silent man was sitting; he'd still not moved which was the creepiest thing about him. Sam stopped, wandered down so he was right next to the stranger, shrugged and continued his search. How could he not see him, he was an inch away. As Sam disappeared into the room at the other end of the church, the man rose.

Dean shouldn't be scared. His heart shouldn't be hammering this wildly in his chest. He hunted ghosts for a living for crying out loud, it shouldn't bother him that the man was walking, no wait, make that floating, out of his pew and turning towards him, head still tucked down to his chin, hands now hanging at his sides. An inhuman laugh seemed to float from nowhere, disembodied, close but so far away at the same time. The man was moving slowly, suspended in air, the toes of his smart black shoes scraping gently on the floor as he glided towards Dean. He was moving so agonisingly slowly that Dean half wanted to shout at him to hurry the hell up, but he didn't think he could even if he wanted to, his voice seemed to have run off with half of his blood.

He was still about ten feet away when he started to lift his head, as slowly as the rest of him. The dark black hair made way for a forehead, and then without warning his head shot up and suddenly he was right in front of him. Dean forgot how to breathe. The man raised a finger to his lips and let out a soft _Shhh_ and then raised a hand slowly to hover just above Dean's face and Dean remembered how to breathe and then he remembered how to scream.

"SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!"

Xxx

The second Sam burst back through the door, the man vanished. Leaving Dean looking around wildly as Sam slid to his knees at his side.

"What? What is it?"

"He was here! You walked right past him! Sam, something's wrong we have to get out of here."

Sam looked worriedly at Dean, he seemed more coherent, more alert, but he could be hallucinating, his body running on reserves. Still, they needed to get help fast, and if Dean was losing it then he might not be able to hold on until Sam got back.

"Ok, we'll go, if you're sure you can make it?"

"I'm sure as hell not staying here alone. Help me up."

Sam did his best to pull his brother to his feet without aggravating his injuries. As soon as they were both upright, the door handle started to rattle violently as if someone was trying to get in from outside.

The brother's glanced at each other.

"This is consecrated ground right?" Dean whispered.

"Yeah, something's wrong."

"Told you." Grumbled Dean

As soon as it had started, the rattling stopped and an eerie silence fell. A loud bang that sounded like a door slamming came from behind them. They whirled around, Dean gasping as fresh pain tore across his stomach at the sudden movement. The Church stood silent and still, Sam was starting to wonder if it was just exhaustion and stress catching up with them when he felt Dean stiffen next to him.

"He's back."

Sam still couldn't see anyone but he was willing to take this one on faith alone.

"Where?"

"Same place. He's still sitting there."

Sam turned slowly while Dean stared straight ahead, he wasn't sure why they were being so quiet, whatever it was already knew they were here. Gingerly he reached out and turned the handle. The door didn't budge; he turned around fully and jiggled it furiously, still nothing. He was heaving his whole weight against the door when Dean spoke.

"Uh, Sammy. Time to go."

"I'm trying Dean; I think we're on lockdown."

"Well figure something out fast 'cause he's coming."

Sam spun round, there was still nothing there, but Dean was shuffling backwards, pressing himself as far against the wall as he could. Sam stood in front of him, not sure how he could fight something he couldn't see but totally at a loss of what else to do.

"What's he doing now?"

"Can't see Sasquatch."

Sam ducked down so that Dean could peer over his shoulder.

"Gone."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, for now. We're in trouble here Sam."

Sam had to fight the urge to scoff at that, _You don't say Dean? To be honest I'm surprised you're still alive never mind the fact that we've managed to get ourselves trapped here. _He had to think, had to get them out of here, because Dean must be running on Hunter's adrenaline alone. Why couldn't he make his brain work, he was smart, he was going to be a lawyer and he couldn't think of a way to get them out of an old church?

"I'll distract him."

Great now his barely conscious brother was coming up with plans before him, brilliant. Wait, what?

"What? What do you mean distract him?"

"I don't think he's interested in you, so I'll keep his focus on me, you find a way out."

"Great plan Dean and what happens when I get out and can't get back in and you're stuck here with him? Huh?"

"Hey I just thought up the first part of the plan, it's your turn."

"No way, it's crazy; I'm not leaving you alone."

"Do you have a better suggestion?"

Sam gave an exasperated sigh "Not yet, but I'm thinking. Besides, we don't know that there's nothing else out there, I could jimmy open the frying pan window and land straight in the fire."

"I'm still not hearing a plan."

"Well what are we dealing with here? Reaper? Ghost?"

"Reaper? Good to know you have such faith in my ability to survive."

"This isn't the time for jokes Dean!"

"It's not a reaper, there's too much... I don't know... feeling?"

"Feeling?"

"You know what I mean. It's like it used to be human or something, I'm thinking ghost, scary ass ghost."

"But it's consecrated ground; can a ghost haunt consecrated ground?"

"What are you talking about? Of course they can, there are haunted graveyards all over the world."

"Great, so it's a ghost, what now? We don't exactly have research materials here."

"There's something about the way he keeps sitting there that's creeping me out. Like he's praying or something."

"Praying for wh..."

Sam trailed off as they heard a small soft scratching from the door, as though someone were dragging their fingernails very slowly down the length of the door, far too high for a person to reach. They turned slowly towards the source of the noise and followed the sound as it travelled down to the handle and then watched as the door knob began to twist as though someone were slowly opening it. Sam grabbed hold of it on instinct, keeping a tight hold, stopping it turning. As soon as he did, there came a soft knock on the wood, three slow knocks from someone or something entreating entrance. Then came three more, slightly louder than before, more insistent. Then another three, even louder. The knocks kept coming in threes, kept growing in volume, until the entire door frame shook with the force.

Dean was leaning heavily against the wall next to the door.

"He's back. I'm scared Sam."

Sam kept himself braced against the door, but his eyes shot up to look at Dean. Dean shouldn't be scared like this. Ok, it was a bad situation, but they'd dealt with worse. There was something different here though, something Sam couldn't put his finger on.

"He's standing up again Sam, I'm scared." Dean's voice had taken on a childish fear, he was weak, he was injured, he was out of his mind with pain and fear, he was vulnerable and he needed Sam to fix it.

Sam had to think, why couldn't he think? He closed his eyes and took a slow deep breath and then he could practically see the light bulb flick on above his head. Maybe Dean was the clue?

"Why are you scared Dean?"

"'Cause he's coming for me?"

"Think Dean, why is he coming for you?"

"'M Dyin'. Sammy he's coming."

The door trembled under Sam's grip as whatever was outside tried to get in. Wait. _There's something trying to get in. Something else. _

"Dean! Think, what is it that you're scared of?"

"He wants me. I'm dyin' and he's come to take me."

"What's he doing? What's he doing right now?"

"He's coming."

Sam groaned in frustration, Dean seemed to be getting more out of it, too focused on his fear.

"Ok, what did he do before, when he came at you before?" Sam waited for a response "DEAN!"

Dean seemed to startle from his trance, he looked worriedly at Sam.

"It's important Dean, tell me what he did before, when I wasn't here."

"He came for me. He uh... shushed me. And then he put his hand over my head, like he was going to take me. Sammy he's still coming, he's getting closer."

"What if he's not coming to get you Dean, what if it's something else? What do you remember? What happened before you saw him the first time?"

"I... uh... I had my eyes closed... There was a noise... and he was there..."

"What kind of noise, come on Dean!"

"I don't know... it didn't belong... it was wrong... something was wrong..."

"And then he came and it stopped? Is that right?" Sam was getting impatient "Dean is that right?"

"I... I don't know... maybe... I can't... think... I... Sam he's nearly here!"

"Listen to me Dean! I don't think he's coming for you! I think he's protecting you!"

Sam was sweating with the effort of keeping the door in place; something instinctual told him that whatever was outside couldn't be allowed to get in.

"But I'm scared Sam, if he's protecting me then why am I so scared."

"Because you're scared of what's on the other side of the door. I know you're confused but you have to trust me." Sam just hoped that he was right on this one. "When he gets to you, don't send him away."

"Are you crazy?"

"Please Dean, I can't hold on much longer!"

"I can't!"

"Yes you can! You have to!"

"What if you're wrong?"

"I'm not." _Please don't let me be wrong._

Their eyes met, and Dean gave a brief nod. It chilled Sam to the core at how deathly pale his brother was and how he seemed to have such faith that Sam would do the right thing.

Sam could do nothing but watch, helpless, whatever Dean was facing he had to face it alone. It scared him to see his brave big brother so frightened, he used to think that Dean was invincible, strong, could protect him from anything. But in recent years he'd realised that under the charming mask was a very broken man, but despite this Dean never let Sam get too close, always maintained the appearance of the strong older brother, and Sam was kind of ok with that, which was why Dean's current behaviour bothered him so much. No matter what, he knew they were screwed.

As he watched, Dean seemed to shrink into himself against the stone wall, but Sam could see his resolve holding as he forced himself to look straight at the invisible being advancing towards him. Dean's breath seemed to catch in his throat, from the way he was looking Sam guessed that it was right in front of him now.

It all happened so quickly. So quickly that Sam would later think that it just wasn't fair, they hadn't really been given a chance.

Sam was so lost in his intense study of Dean that it took him a moment to realise that the door had stopped shaking. Unfortunately, the extra moment it took to register was the moment when an incredible boom resounded from the door, followed by an intense shockwave that threw him from the door. He lost his tenuous grip on the handle and found himself skidding down the aisle on his back. He'd been thrown far, too far, too far away from Dean.

"NO!" He heard his brother yell and to his dismay realised that Dean had lost his concentration when Sam had been tossed away from him and had sent his protector away again, leaving himself open to further harm.

Sam pushed himself up, stumbling over his feet in his haste. He wasn't far from his brother, not really, but everything was happening so fast that there was no way he could reach him in time. But that didn't stop him from trying.

He was almost there, just a few more steps and he could do something, could stop this. But it was too late. The thick wooden doors burst open and Sam only had time to yell a desperate "_DEAN!"_ before he was overcome with a vicious flurry of snow, blinding him. The howling wind deafening him. Beating him back. Freezing snow choking him, cutting off his frenzied shouts.

It was over as quickly as it had started. The door slammed shut, the wind and snow dropped; the silence was almost as deafening as the wind had been. He frantically swiped the water from his eyes and looked around him. Everything looked the same, a few puddles the only indication that anything had happened. Sam's heart clenched as he realised that he was alone inside the old church. Dean was gone.

* * *

Thanks for reading, I should have the next chapter up next week sometime. Also does anyone think that I should change the summery, I'm not very good at them. Thanks.


	3. Chapter 3

A.N. Sorry for the delay, I've had an epic writer's block. I'm not too sure about this chapter, so any feedback is appreciated. Thanks for reading and enjoy.

* * *

_With sweetened talk of dreams and bliss and the deliciousness of Judders._

Even as he threw himself at the door Sam knew his efforts were futile. The heavy door didn't so much as quiver under the force of his weight. He was trapped. A ferocious rage erupted inside him at the sheer unfairness of it all.

"NO!" He threw himself at the door again and again; beat at it with his fists until his knuckles were bloody. It wasn't fair! Didn't they have enough crap to deal with? Dean was severely injured and now he'd been taken by who knows what and Sam was trapped here, beating up a door. His energy ran out and he sank to the floor, feeling too hopeless to even cry. Dean was probably dead. He was a stubborn son of a bitch but he was only human, he could only lose so much blood before his body called it quits.

He wasn't dead though. Not yet. Sam could tell. Call it denial, psychic crap or the simple brotherly bond between them but Sam knew that Dean was still alive. But he wouldn't be for much longer if Sam couldn't get to him soon.

He pushed himself to his feet. Why the hell couldn't he get out? If it was after Dean then was Sam stuck here to keep him from Dean? Or was Sam being protected by what had been protecting Dean? Was the other spirit still in here with him? He was suddenly grateful that Dean wasn't here to see what he was about to do.

"Uh...Hello? Is anyone there? My name's Sam and my brother's been taken and I need to find him. So uh...if you could...open the door...? That'd be great." He cringed inwardly. Dean would never let him hear the end of this, talking to what was probably a figment of his brother's pain induced imagination.

"Great." He mumbled, suddenly embarrassed.

He was halfway down the aisle, to see if there was a window in the adjoining room he could wiggle out of when he heard a soft click behind him. The door was standing ajar. He didn't know why, maybe the bad mojo had worn off, maybe it was a trap, or maybe his awkward plea had been heard? To be honest he didn't care. He could get out and if he could get out he could get to Dean. He scrambled on the floor for his things; it would be a very bad idea to go out there without salt, guns and holy water.

Gingerly, Sam eased the door open wide and stepped out into the night. It was still snowing, thick flakes drifting softly to the ground, it could almost be peaceful were it not for the carnage surrounding him. Headstones were cracked and broken, the silent angels had been ripped from their posts, and were all now stood with their backs to him. As if whatever had taken Dean had not wanted to be seen by their eyes. This chilled Sam more than anything else.

A quick, mad thought flashed into his mind _We are going to have to get the _hell_ out of dodge before they find this mess!_ He almost giggled at that, feeling himself begin to crack under the pressure. He'd have thought that hysteria would be more Dean's department, but when Dean got stressed Dean got angry, when Sam got stressed he either found himself wallowing in despair or giggling like a hysterical schoolgirl. Truth be told it was probably one of the only situations when Dean felt like the more mature one.

There was definitely no time for that now though. Because at the centre of all the devastation was a path in the snow, one that was quickly being covered by fresh flakes but it was a path that looked like something had been dragged along it. Something man shaped and bleeding. It dawned on Sam that apart from the angels, the rest of the graveyard looked as if a powerful force that stormed along that path had forced the headstones and markers away. Sam shuddered at the thought that it now had his brother.

He didn't have time to waste. He took off at a jog down the path, through the gate that was now hanging off its hinges and started striding through the thick snow. He was grateful for the fact that it gave him an actual course to follow but it was so thick that it was going to make it so much harder to catch up to Dean. As he reached the tree line he paused and looked back towards the church. Silhouetted in the doorway against the dull golden glow from inside, stood a solitary man, head bowed as if in prayer.

Xxx

It was safe to say that Dean Winchester was having a seriously crappy day. First he'd been mauled by a damn yeti! Then he'd frozen his ass off in the damn snow! Then he'd been haunted by a freaking creepy ghost! And now he was being dragged by his ankles through the damn snow again by something that for some reason scared the crap out of him and that he couldn't quite see.

This wasn't how snow was supposed to work. Right now Sam should be bitching at him for trying to engage him in a snowball fight, and without being smug; he really did make a fine snow phallus.

But instead, all the clothes that Sam had bundled him into were now soaking and had ridden up so there was nothing between the sensitive skin on his back and the frigid snow.

He was definitely still bleeding, he could feel the wounds tugging as he was dragged out of the church to find himself once again on his back in the snow.

Yep. Seriously crappy day.

On the plus side, his adrenaline seemed to have picked up a little. Dean wriggled himself onto his front which was no easy feat. He realised his mistake when the movement caused pain to spike through his stomach. He tried to ignore the friction on his injuries and instead uselessly scrambled for purchase with already numb fingers. He couldn't grab hold of anything, couldn't slow his progress. Whatever was dragging him didn't seem in too much of a hurry but he was still moving fast, the trees quickly came into his vision and disappeared just as quickly as they were replaced by new ones. The motion made Dean feel dizzy and sick. He tried kicking out at the thing dragging him, but from the lack of reaction he doubted it'd even noticed.

He was really beginning to think that he wouldn't make it out of this one. He couldn't tell how long they'd been moving like this, it could be two minutes, it could be ten, it could be two hours for all he knew.

He was squirming around desperately; fear and instinct making his body kick out, grab hold, get away. But his movements were sluggish, cold and blood loss disorienting him, his body wasn't paying attention to the way his mind was screaming at him to _GET AWAY! YOU HAVE TO GET AWAY!_

But nothing he did had any effect; he had almost resigned himself to his no doubt grizzly fate when he found himself hoisted into the air and then dumped unceremoniously on the ground.

He hit the ground with a bang. The air was knocked out of him and for a minute he could do nothing but lie there with his face in the snow while he tried to find the strength to push himself over. The pain in his midsection had intensified. He wondered if it was possible to be more screwed than he was right now. The odds were very much stacked against him.

Eventually he managed to curl a hand around his stomach, he assumed he could feel a wetness there, but he was just guessing, his hands were cold and numb, and even if he could feel anything, it could have been either blood or snow.

Keeping his hand safely tucked where it was, Dean eased himself over so he was lying on his back. Tentatively he opened his eyes. _Please please please. No claws or teeth._

He was alone.

Lying among the trees, his face stung from the cold and where branches had clawed angrily at his skin. For a few minutes he just lay there, staring at the snow, shivering, clutching his stomach, his breath coming in rattles. _Death rattle Dean. _He wished that little voice in his head would shut the hell up for five freaking minutes. He cleared his throat as if to prove it wrong, and decided that was a very bad idea when renewed pain erupted across his middle.

It was silent. He couldn't hear anything besides his rasping breaths and occasional grunts of pain. The snow made everything quiet and peaceful. It took him a while to fully register that it was still snowing, thick, unrelenting flakes that were steadily turning him into a human snowman.

Groaning, he used his free hand to push himself into a sitting position. The simple movement caused him to become dizzy and he spent another few minutes sitting slumped in the snow, eyes squeezed shut, legs spread out, hand still clutched protectively to his stomach. For a while he just concentrated on breathing and staying awake.

Eventually he lifted his head and took in his surroundings. He had no idea how far he'd come, he didn't even know what direction he'd come, he'd gotten disoriented when he was tossed into the air and the snow was covering all the evidence fast. Speaking of snow, he pulled his legs out from where they were disappearing under a white blanket. _Mmm blanket. Sleep._ He shook his head to rid himself of the desire to just lie down and go to sleep. But he was so tired and so cold. If it was possible, his head felt even fuzzier than before. There was something niggling away, something about how he ended up there in the first place.

He was getting pretty fed up of the way he kept forgetting things today. Oh well, one thing at a time. He had to find Sam, it was an instinct etched so deeply into his being that it was the one thing he could keep hold of. Sam.

Groaning he pushed himself to his feet, legs trembling with both the cold and the effort the simple movement required. He shut his eyes through another wave of dizziness and nausea. His whole body felt heavy, his soaking jeans were like lead weights hindering his movements. He suddenly felt too claustrophobic in all the layers Sam had bundled him into, but didn't have the energy to take any off.

He glanced down and in the eerie glow the snow created he saw a disturbing patch of red smeared across the bandages. He quickly covered it with his hand again, what he couldn't see couldn't hurt him.

He turned slowly on the spot, trying to gauge the way he'd come. He found the place where the snow seemed slightly more disturbed and took a few steps through the trees. He was starting to think he should have stayed put and waited for Sam, when he spotted blood, he never thought he'd be so happy at the sight of his own blood. He probably should still wait for Sam, but if he was moving then there was less chance that he'd just lay down and die.

He was making agonisingly slow progress through the trees and the path he was following seemed to be getting fainter and fainter as he went, becoming more covered by the snow. His feet were uncoordinated and more than once he tripped over his own foot and it was a miracle that he managed to stay upright. He used his free hand to push against the trees to help his progress. It didn't help that he wasn't even on a proper path, he'd just been dragged through the trees and he kept tripping over roots and branches.

He knew that he should be trying to figure out why it had dragged him here and dumped him but it was taking all his energy just to keep moving. Let Sam figure it out. He tried not to think that Sam might be hurt as well, because if Sam was hurt then they were totally done for. But even if he was then Dean had to find him so he wouldn't be alone.

A rustling in the trees to his left had him jerking his head in that direction, freezing, listening. He stood for a couple of minutes just listening, but it was silent. He figured it was just a rabbit searching for its home.

It was a few minutes later, and he'd made hardly any progress when he heard it again. The sound of snow falling from a branch with a soft thud. He was making himself paranoid, it was normal, that's what snow did.

Still, he tried to hurry his pace, hopefully Sam was looking for him and if they both followed the trail then they'd find each other before too long.

He kept trying to convince himself that the noises he was hearing were all the normal noises of nature. The rustling in the bushes was just animals, the air on the back of his neck was just a light breeze, and the moving tree limbs were just down to the weight of the snow. All these things were perfectly plausible explanations. He was more than willing to believe that he was just being paranoid.

But there was no mistaking the hushed "_Deeeeean." _That was whispered from the darkness.

It wasn't his brother, there was a split second that he prayed it might be Sam, but he knew, knew that it wasn't Sam. The voice was mocking, taunting, barely a voice at all.

He paused only for a moment, then pushed on. He couldn't stop; if he stopped it would take him. He wanted to believe it was his imagination, but he knew it wasn't.

He tried to ignore the searing pain in his gut, the fear that was clawing at his chest.

"_Deeeeeean." _It was behind him this time, he glanced back. Was it his imagination or were those branches reaching out to him? The tree roots crawling up from under the snow to snake their way towards him.

_Don't think about it. Just keep moving._

"_Deeeeeean." _He gasped and jerked away as he felt something brush against his neck. It wasn't really a voice at all; it was weird, like something whispered on the wind. He knew now why it had just dropped him; it was playing with him, like a cat will taunt a mouse before it pounces. He knew that he was playing right into this things sick game, but he couldn't help it, he was scared damn it.

"_Deeeeeean." _It was in front of him now; he could sense it lurking in the darkness. It could see him, he was sure of it; it had been watching his every move, biding its time. He was being hunted.

He thought he saw a flash of cold eyes shining in the shadows ahead, but they were gone too fast for him to be sure.

His best chance was to keep going and hope that Sam found him.

He couldn't see it but he could sense it, moving around him, its movements quick and delicate, despite this, he could feel the power radiating from the darkness. Dean didn't get scared very often, but right now he was very nearly crapping himself in fear, and wouldn't that be humiliating when his body was found. Although, weren't you supposed to poop yourself when a bear was nearby? Maybe this was the same kind of deal.

_That's right Dean, keep thinking stupid thoughts, distract yourself from the freaking monster following you._ The woods seemed to be coming alive around him, closing in on him. Soft rustling noises seemed to come from every side now. And as if he wasn't creeped out enough, a bird decided to start shrieking somewhere in the night.

Dean recoiled as a tree branch snagged at his sleeve, it was persistent, tangling itself further the more he struggled. He forced himself to take a deep breath and used uncooperative shaking fingers to free himself. The trees weren't out to get him, it was just his imagination.

Was it though? There was something strange in these woods, something that always danced just out of his line of vision.

"_Deeeeeean."_

Ignore it and keep moving. Just keep moving.

"_Deeeeeean."_

It was taking all he had not to totally freak out, he'd have run if he could, but he could barely get his legs to move as it was.

"_Deeeeeean."_

The world suddenly tilted to the side and he reached out to steady himself against a tree, he closed his eyes as he waited for it to pass. When he opened them again, he didn't feel quite so panicked. The world was still there, Sam was looking for him. Everything would be ok.

A soft breeze picked up as he walked, causing the branches ahead of him to curl up one by one, as if beckoning him forward. And he was powerless not to follow. Something wasimploring him forward, he could probably stop if he wanted but part of him didn't want to stop, it was as if a sudden urge had taken over him.

He felt like he was separating from his body, like his mind was floating off somewhere nice and warm. He was so cold, and he really wanted to be warm. An odd feeling of serenity and ecstasy washed over him. He found himself turning, wandering from the bloody path he'd forged, into a different kind of darkness. He wondered vaguely why he was doing this, but he felt that everything would be ok if he just followed the trees. They were all beckoning to him now, spindly branches curling and uncurling as he walked, normal trees didn't curl that much, but these did.

It was quite mesmerizing, watching them curl their way jerkily in and out, like one of those old monster movies.

Dean couldn't feel much of anything anymore. His arm had fallen from where he'd curled it round his stomach and it now hung loosely at his side. He couldn't feel the cold or the pain he knew he must be in. All he was aware of was the compelling urge to follow the trees. He wasn't in control anymore, he could tell. And that was ok, someone else was in control, someone else could sort everything out. All he had to do was let his legs take him forward.

It felt like he was melting into a dream, nothing was real, nothing had consequence or meaning. The world was distorted, sound was fading, his vision was blurring.

The last thing Dean Winchester was aware of was a small flicker of panic as he lost himself in a pair of steely cold eyes.

Xxx

Sam couldn't decide if the figure he'd seen in the doorway was comforting or downright disturbing. Part of him still wanted to believe it was a symptom of Dean's delirium, but if he'd seen something too, then he really wasn't sure what it meant.

Either way there was no time to dwell on it now, he could figure out what it was once Dean was drugged up, stitched up and tucked up in a nice warm bed.

He shivered against the frigid night air, it had just gone two am and the snow hadn't let up for a good couple of hours. It was frustratingly deep, hindering his progress. Sam was beyond freezing now, he had discovered the hard way that his boots weren't as waterproof as he'd hoped and he'd stopped being able to feel the cold ache in his toes a while ago. He was shaking like a leaf, down to only a thin t-shirt and flannel shirt to protect him against the cold. He kept telling himself that if Dean had more clothes on then he had a better chance, but the further he followed the trail into the woods, the more he began to fear that he'd be finding a body.

He was trying to push the most recent mental image his brain had forced upon him, (of finding Dean frozen solid and being forced to use him as a sled to get back to civilisation. Never mind that it wasn't exactly hilly terrain) when he heard crunching sound somewhere in the trees. Like a footstep.

He froze, eyes darting backwards and forwards in the darkness when he spotted movement. Ahead and to his right, a figure was moving. Stealthily, Sam moved forward, all too aware of any sound he made.

It wasn't hard to get closer; the figure was moving almost painfully slowly, they seemed to be swaying gently. They reminded Sam of the way sleepwalkers were depicted in cartoons, he half expected their arms to be stretched out ahead of them.

The figure plodded on, clearly unaware of Sam's presence. Finally he managed to sneak his way close enough to make out who he was following.

"Dean?" It came out as a whisper, Sam wasn't sure why, the whole situation seemed wrong. Then it hit him, Dean was alive!

"DEAN!" Sam yelled, and started forward. Dean made no indication that he'd heard his brother.

"DEAN!" Sam was jogging now, trying to run against the snow. Why the hell wasn't Dean answering him? He hit a patch of ice and went down, wincing as his knee hit the ground with a bang.

Sam pushed himself to his feet and followed his brother, something was wrong here. Dean continued on at that slow pace, but Sam didn't seem to be catching up with him, he kept getting tangled in branches that were reluctant to release him, stumbling on tree roots that seemed to come up from nowhere and he could swear that he kept getting turned around, finding himself hurrying away from Dean instead of to him, when some obstacle seemed to rear in front of him, causing him to change direction.

He knew that it was just his overstressed imagination though; exhaustion, panic and the darkness were playing tricks on him.

Sam growled in frustration as a fallen tree loomed in front of him, leaning at such an angle that he couldn't go over it or under it. Dean was only a few feet away now and Sam was damned if he was going to let him out of his sight again.

He darted through the trees, batting away branches and debris that got in his way. A particularly stubborn branch embedded a thorn deeply in the soft flesh of his wrist, he ripped it out, spun away and suddenly he was right in front of Dean.

They were on the same path; his brother was only a few feet away, walking slowly towards him. Sam rushed forward and clamped his hands down on his brother's arms.

"Dean! Thank God man! What happened? Are you ok?"

Dean didn't answer him, just continued to try and walk forward, forcing Sam to take steps backwards.

"Dean? Hey!" Sam clicked his fingers in front of Dean's face. Nothing. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

Dean didn't even acknowledge Sam's presence, he just kept walking. His eyes were staring somewhere over Sam's shoulder and Sam had to check that there was nothing behind him. It was eerily similar to his earlier behaviour in the church.

Sam took a quick inventory; Dean was soaked and freezing but he wasn't shivering anymore which was definitely a bad sign. His pupils were blown, not registering anything. Sam glanced down to his abdomen, and lifted the soaking layers of clothing, in the ghostly light of the moon he saw that the bandages were stained a sickening pale red. His brother was covered in light cuts and scratches no doubt from his recent trip through the woods, dragged by something unseen.

Something that could still be out here, watching them even now.

Sam had to get his brother out of here, gently he tried to turn him back the way they'd come, but Dean had a surprising amount of strength and just kept moving. He tried using more and more force, tried lifting him up in an effort to carry him, but Dean just pushed him away, the only sign that he was aware on some level that Sam was even there.

Sam was debating the pros and cons of knocking his brother out cold and dragging him to safety when he heard something behind him.

It sounded like the wind was whispering his name. The skin on the back of his neck began to prickle. There was someone behind him now; he knew it, something that Dean was following in his trance. Cautiously he reached for his gun in his waistband. He spun round and only had a second to wonder how he'd managed to back right up into a tree before his momentum forced his head to make contact and he sank down into a thick blackness.

* * *

Tbc. I hope this chapter was alright, I wasn't too sure about it. Thank you for reading.


	4. Chapter 4

A.N I am so sorry that I haven't updated in so long, I have had an even worse case of writer's block and it took me forever to shift it. Thank you to everyone who continues to read this story, I promise it won't be that long a wait again.

* * *

_But dreams though sweet have teeth my dear, and sharpened ones at that._

Sam groaned. He was awake before he opened his eyes. He felt sick, his head was pounding and he was freezing. Tentatively he cracked one eye open, feeling like he had the mother of all hangovers. When the world didn't tilt on its axis he opened the other eye. He felt like crap, his head was fuzzy, he couldn't quite remember why he was out here freezing his ass off in the middle of nowhere.

Then it came screaming back to him. He shot up into a sitting position, breathing deeply when his stomach protested at the sudden movement. He looked around; Dean was nowhere to be seen. He squinted at his watch, just after three. He'd not been out for too long, Dean couldn't have gotten that far at the speed he'd been walking.

Getting to his feet was not as easy as it should have been, his vision swam and he had to steady himself and breathe through it. He had to get it together; he was no use to Dean if he was concussed and hypothermic. He was still shivering, that was a good sign, despite his brief interlude, he'd managed to fall in a heap at the base of a tree, sheltering him somewhat from the snow.

He wrapped his arms around himself and trudged forwards, trying to follow the footprints in the snow. The flakes weren't falling with such intensity anymore which meant that the footprints were still visible. All he had to do was follow them and they should lead him to his brother.

It still unsettled him how Dean hadn't even noticed he was there. Like he was under a spell. The Dean he knew would never have left his unconscious brother lying in the snow without a damn good reason.

Sam couldn't feel much of anything, just pain and cold, a deep penetrating cold that bit at his skin and made each breath painful.

In a normal situation their plight would be hopeless, but they were Winchester's. Normal was never really their thing. They were survivors, their Dad had taught them well. They had the resources to hold out longer than the average man. But how much longer could they hold out? Sam was being driven by the need to save Dean, if Dean didn't make it them Sam's motivation would die right along with his brother and he'd probably just lie down in the snow and let sleep take him.

It was so hard to stay alert, his head was swimming, and he was so tired. His senses were dulled; he had no idea if he was still being followed. Sam tried to make himself pay attention to his surroundings, he couldn't give up now, he could be being watched. He'd heard something whisper his name before he'd knocked himself out, he was sure of it.

He tried to think about what they could be dealing with, he needed to keep his mind focused but it was hard, so hard to think past anything but the cold and exhaustion. All he could come up with was a Wendigo but it didn't seem to fit. Dean had been in some sort of trance, a Wendigo was more likely to just grab a snack, they weren't the play with your food type.

Sam followed the footprints deeper into the woods, following them over fallen trees and under low hanging branches. Sam was hurrying, praying that he was walking faster than Dean had been. He was trying to rush his progress so much that he almost missed the point where the prints doubled. Sam stopped, puzzled, unsure if his eyes or mind were playing tricks on him. From where he was standing there were two sets of prints, one veering off to the left, the other to the right.

"Damn it!" Sam grumbled.

Something was definitely screwing with him, trying to throw him off. Renewed rage erupted inside him. He'd be damned if he was going to let some supernatural douche finish them off! Not after all they'd dealt with.

Reacting purely on instinct, Sam ploughed straight ahead, ignoring the two paths in the snow. If something was trying to throw him off the trail it was just as likely to cover Dean's real prints and if it thought he was falling for it, it could go straight to hell!

The anger bubbling in his gut spurred him on, dulling the pain in his head. There'd be time to pass out later, once he'd killed something they could find a nice cosy ER and he could sink into blissful nothingness while a team of strangers fixed up his brother and provided him with some heavy duty painkillers.

He doubled his pace, determined that they were going to win this. The nagging doubts were just starting to worm their way back into his mind when up ahead he saw a pale glow.

He forced himself to slow down, to catch his breath and control himself. He couldn't afford to be seen, he needed the upper hand.

Stealthily he crept forward, softly approaching the ghostly light. The eerie atmosphere sent a shiver of fear up his spine. He felt an incredible sense of foreboding.

Sam winced as he felt something crack beneath his foot. Whatever he had stepped on was now wrapped around his ankle, briefly he thought that the thing in the woods knew he was there. He peered down and couldn't stop the gasp of surprise as he found his foot embedded in a rib cage.

Sam grimaced and tried to free himself without making too much noise. Tattered clothing still clung to the skeleton, empty eyes gaped at him, and the bony fingers seemed to be clawing at the ground. Sam shuddered and finally managed to wrench himself free. Dead bodies didn't freak him out anymore but that didn't mean he wanted to become entangled with one, especially when he had more pressing issues on his mind.

He backed away from the body, wondering what it had died from; it disturbed him that it had been sitting out here for a long time without anyone finding it. Had this unfortunate soul also been lost in the woods, perhaps lead off the path to die?

He heard another sickening crack as he backed up from the body and suddenly the skeleton in front of him wasn't the problem anymore. He already knew what he'd stood on before he looked down. He felt nauseas as he realised he'd crushed part of a skeletal hipbone. Another body, face down, arms and legs bent in such a way it looked as if it had been crawling for Sam and had laid down when he looked. Like some kind of twisted game of 'what's the time Mr Wolf?'

There were more. It disturbed him to realise that they were marking a pathway. Skeletons were laid on either side of him; some appeared to be crawling their way towards him, towards the path, some were even laid in front of him, as if they'd made it further than the others. A few of them were scattered, bones dispersed throughout the snow. An animal maybe? But it sort of looked like they'd fallen from a height, and their bones had shattered. Almost all of them seemed to be reaching out for him; skeletal fingers brushed his ankles as he passed, moving slowly towards the pale light.

There were so many, so many bodies that were lying here, forgotten. As he fumbled for his small flashlight to look closer it dawned on him that some were in different stages of decomposition. Some still had skin. One or two looked almost mummified, dried shrunken skin clinging sickly to sunken eyes and cheeks. Tattered clothing signalled different eras, different styles, different personalities, and served as a haunting reminder to Sam that these were once people, people who had never thought that they'd die out here to be forgotten.

How the hell had no one found this place before, some of the bones had obviously been out here for years. Had no one looked for them? Had no one stumbled across this grisly bone yard? Maybe they had, maybe people had found this place and then found themselves playing the part of the new victim.

Sam felt sick, what was he walking into? Were the spirits of these people still here, haunting the woods? He couldn't do anything to help them; all he could do was try and stop his brother becoming the latest addition. He tried so hard not to stand on any more bones, but some were spread out across the path, two even had their fingers entwined, as if offering one another some small comfort in death. Every time Sam heard another snap of bone beneath his feet, he grimaced and offered up a silent apology.

He couldn't make himself walk any faster, partly from an irrational fear that if he made more noise then the corpses would wake up and come after him. But mainly from the deep cold terror that when he reached the last body, he'd see his brother's lifeless face staring up at him. That fear grew inside him until finally he came across the last body. It wasn't Dean. He felt a guilty pang of relief as he stared down at the body that looked as if he'd just died. It could have been preserved like that because of the cold weather, but Sam guessed that he'd just been lying out here for a few days.

The worst part was the look on their decaying faces. He couldn't convince himself that these people had just laid down and gone to sleep from the cold, that they hadn't really been aware of what was happening. The last man had an expression of pure terror etched on his face. Eyes and mouth wide in disbelief, blood leaked from his ears and his arms and legs were twisted at unnatural angles.

Sam felt utterly unprepared. He was weak, he was lost, he had no idea what he was up against and the likelihood of their fate was lying in the snow in front of him. He calmly thought that if it came to it, it might be best to finish Dean off quickly with a bullet to the head. Rather than have him suffer the same fate as this poor man.

Leaving the bodies behind, he tried to ignore the insane notion that they were crawling after him, more than once he had to glance over his shoulder to check that they weren't dragging themselves along behind him.

The pale light was fading; it had moved away from him while he had stood staring at his chilling discovery. He forced himself to hurry, to pay less attention to what he was standing in. He wasn't sure if the light was for him, he kind of hoped it wasn't, if his presence wasn't noticed then he might just be able to get the upper hand.

He was silently cursing his feet that kept getting tangled up together. He was having trouble coordinating his body, it felt like he had twice has many limbs as normal, and his vision kept swimming in and out of focus. Definitely not good, he had to get it together, he was no use to anyone if he was unconscious or dead.

He tried to think of things to keep himself focused, but his concentration kept drifting off. He was trying to remember what number he'd gotten up to in the seven times table when suddenly Dean was right in front of him.

It took Sam a second longer than normal to react. Dean was standing five feet away from him, looking right at him. The path had been clear a second ago, Sam was sure of it. Was he sure? His mind felt fuzzy and unclear. It didn't matter though, because Dean was there, standing in front of him. Staring. Smiling. In the eerie pale light he looked horribly pale, his torso was covered in blood, his eyes were sunken and gaunt, but what disturbed Sam most was the smile on his brother's face. It wasn't Dean's trademark grin; it was a little too wide, a little too empty, a little too dead. It failed to light up his brother's eyes the way it usually did, but Sam could almost see something else in those eyes, something that didn't belong.

He took a step forwards and Dean stepped back, the smile never faltering. Sam took another step and again Dean stepped back. It was creepy the way he kept staring at Sam, just smiling, not talking, not doing anything unless Sam made a move first.

"Dean..." Sam ventured quietly, before Dean brought a lightning fast finger to his lips

"_." _

Sam shuddered at the hushing noise coming from his brother's mouth, the way it sounded was wrong, the length was wrong, everything about this was wrong.

Sam opened his mouth to try again, but Dean jumped backwards, his grin stretching impossibly wider. Sam watched in horrified fascination as Dean reached a hand behind his back and produced his knife. Sam's head was screaming at him to react but all he could do was watch as Dean fixed him with an intense stare, raised his knife wielding arm and rammed the blade viciously into his own throat. Sam still couldn't move, he couldn't break away from Dean's eyes, those eyes that weren't right. Only when Dean had finished dragging the blade across his throat and even more blood was spurting out, was Sam able to move. Even as Sam ran to him, ran in a futile attempt to save him, Dean was still standing there, still smiling.

Sam knew it wasn't right, none of it was right, the feel of Dean in his arms wasn't right, the way that Dean just watched as Sam lowered him to the ground, the way that Sam couldn't look him in the eye, couldn't look into those empty windows, the way that Dean was still smiling. Sam couldn't stand it, he held on to his brother's neck, even though it wasn't right, and shut his eyes to shut out Dean's. It wasn't right, and when he opened his eyes, he wasn't really surprised to find that Dean was gone and he was once again alone in the woods.

Xxx

Dean had been floating in a state of nothingness. No pain, no fear, no feelings whatsoever, just a thick white fog. Then something had punctured that fog, something painful and suddenly he was back. Back in his body, back with the pain, back lying on his back in the snow.

It took him a while to work out what was happening, he was disoriented and confused. So he didn't immediately struggle when he felt something wet and cloying worming its way down his throat. His head was being forced back, and he was choking, drowning on something, he couldn't breathe, couldn't see. If he could just find the strength to open his eyes then he could feel in control again. It was an effort to wrench his eyes open and even when he did his vision was blurry with sleep and pained tears.

He still couldn't make out more than a vague shape hovering above him. He needed to breathe, his lungs were screaming for oxygen, his legs kicking out with a will of their own. He could feel it blocking his nose, making his head burn, his chest felt like it was going to burst open if he didn't inhale some sweet air instead of the liquidy substance that was killing him.

His hands were grappling uselessly at his face, at the hands above him, desperation making him clumsy and unfocused. Then, just as the ringing in his ears had swelled to an almost unbearable pitch and the spots dancing in front of his vision had grown so that they had become one giant purple dot, the pressure was gone, the liquid was gone and he was instinctively rolling himself onto his side, choking and gagging and spewing up the foulness. He inhaled sweet air, the best thing he could ever remember tasting and for a moment just lay there breathing in lungful after lungful of precious oxygen, as if he could store it up in case someone tried to take it away from him again.

He knew he should be trying to escape, he had no idea what he was escaping from, but that was usually the plan. But he was so tired and confused, he couldn't remember anything, nothing since walking through the woods to find Sam. He couldn't even open his eyes, he couldn't tell if he was cold, he couldn't do anything but lie there and savour every precious breath.

It was funny how he never thought about breathing, he liked breathing, liked the way it helped power the rest of his body. Liked the way he could inhale a smell, like shampoo on a girl's hair. The way he could tell that he was in shape from how fast and far he could run or how deep he could dig a grave before he got tired. Mainly he liked how it kept him alive.

For some reason he didn't really like breathing right now, thirty seconds ago it had been the best thing in the world, but now it kind of hurt. It shouldn't hurt. Breathing stopped the hurting, _controlled breaths, breathe through the pain_ all that crap. But it did hurt, it was cold, every time he inhaled it felt like tiny icicles were clawing their way down his throat, freezing him from the inside out. He couldn't exhale properly, for each deep, chilling breath he took; he could only release a small puff of air. He tried to stop, tried to just take little breaths, but his body wouldn't let him, it needed air. He tried to stay calm, if he panicked then he'd just breathe faster and it would hurt more and he'd suffocate quicker. The air was so cold though, the nerves in his teeth complained every time he took a breath in. Then his toes started to tingle, just slightly at first, and then a freezing, sharp prickling ran up his foot. With an effort he pushed himself onto his back and raised his head to look at his feet. His vision was still swimming, with pain and blood loss and exhaustion, but there was nothing there. There was nothing around him that he could see. But his feet were twitching, working their way up into a furious shaking as the prickling ran up his body, like an intense form of pins and needles that was slowly claiming him. With every breath the trembling grew more severe, as if he was filling himself up with this poisonous air. His breaths grew shallower and the spots danced in front of his eyes again, waiting to take him down.

His legs were bouncing up and down off the ground now like they were having their own seizure. As the sensation clawed its way up his body he tried not to panic. He felt it snake past his hips to the small of his back and he gasped at the new found cold, he was almost impressed that he could still feel so cold, he had been positive that he'd passed the worst of it but lo and behold, new realms of pain.

His chest seized up, there was something under his skin, whatever had been poured down his throat was now killing him from the inside. It wasn't exactly a pleasant way to go. In fact it was damn right painful and unsettling. He instinctively tried to push his head back as he felt its icy fingers crawling up the inside of his throat. The rest of his body felt alien to him now, he could sense it shuddering but the panic was closing in fast now. The need for air was excruciating, no matter how deeply he tried to draw breath it just hurt.

But suddenly, somehow through all the pain and confusion, he was standing, pushing himself to his feet on limbs that he was sure couldn't support him. Then he was walking, short, stunted steps on violently trembling legs. He couldn't think clearly, he wasn't doing this was he? No, because he couldn't breathe, because he wanted nothing more than to just close his mind off from the agony, the feeling of separation from his body. The one thought that made it through the confused, pained fog, was _nope, you're not in charge any more Dean. _

Something else was moving him. Something had crawled inside his skin and it was killing him. He was vaguely aware of his mind going somewhere else now, partly still trapped in his agonised body, desperate to take control, but part of him was going somewhere else. It filled him with ecstasy and he wanted to stay there, stay in this place where he didn't belong, where nothing living should ever belong.

Before Dean slipped away again, he heard a chuckle in his ear and felt himself smile.

Xxx

Sam let out a shaky breath and looked wildly around him, there was no one there. He inspected his hands in desperation, no blood. There was no sign that there had been anyone out here but him. He stayed crouched on the ground for a minute, trying to get himself under control. It wasn't Dean, he'd known it wasn't Dean, everything about him was off, but he'd panicked, convinced that his brother had hacked open his jugular in front of him and he had reacted purely on instinct, there had been no time to think.

Could it have been an hallucination? No, it had to be to do with the thing that had dragged Dean from the church, the same thing that had no doubt been screwing with them all night.

He must be getting close, it was trying to freak him out and throw him off the scent. Either that or it was just a sadistic son of a bitch.

He pushed himself to his feet again, ignored the way his vision swam for a moment and resolutely stomped forwards.

It dawned on him that it had stopped snowing, small mercies and all that.

The thing in the darkness might have thought that it would destroy Sam with its little stunt, but it had made a huge mistake, because now Sam was angry and he used that anger to fuel him, to spur him on.

He stopped short when Dean appeared in front of him again.

"Funny I thought I saw you die ten minutes ago." He sneered.

The thing that looked like Dean didn't react, just stood there, still staring and smiling that same maddening smile.

Sam's nostrils flared in frustration and uncertainty. There was still a tiny part of him that thought his brother might just be standing in front of him.

On impulse he pulled out his gun with numb hands.

"Who are you and where is my brother?"

Dean just cocked his head to the side.

"ANSWER ME DAMNIT!" Sam tightened his finger on the trigger, or he thought he did; he couldn't feel his fingers too well anymore.

The thing that looked like Dean smiled brighter _"."_

Sam shuddered, the voice wasn't human, could never _be_ human. It was like an empty whisper, one that reverberated through his very soul. He loathed hearing that voice come out of Dean's mouth.

The Dean thing turned slowly and wandered further into the trees.

"HEY! HEY COME BACK! WHERE IS MY BROTHER!"

Sam sped up to a jog as he disappeared from view; he rounded a bend and gasped in shock as he found himself face to face with the thing using his brother's skin. He tried to recoil back, but the Dean thing shot out a lightning quick hand and with an inhuman strength, forced Sam's hand holding the gun to his forehead. Sam tried to pull back, instinct refusing to let him shoot his brother, but the Dean thing just smiled and pressed his finger down on the trigger.

The shot sounded louder in the silent woods. Blood and brains exploded everywhere. But Dean still stood there, still smiling and Sam couldn't help but reach out to him. He took him by the shoulders, aware of how foreign the thing under his hands felt.

The Dean thing cocked his bloody head again "__y_?"_ It sounded more human this time, more like Dean, more uncertain and Sam snatched his hands away and shut his eyes tight until it was over.

When dared to open his eyes again he was alone. He was almost relieved until he glanced up ahead and again saw Dean standing there.

_Damn._

He was just going to ignore it. Just keep walking right on past it. His plan was working fine, with an effort he managed not to look at it while he walked past, but he could feel its eyes on him, could see its head following him out of his peripheral vision. He'd almost convinced himself that this one was going to just let him go.

"_Oh God Sammy please help me_."

It sounded so like Dean that he couldn't help but whip back round. Sam looked into its dead eyes, it was becoming more and more like his brother. Was it trying to lure him into a trap? It couldn't mimic Dean's eyes though and as long as Sam was sure that it wasn't really his brother then it could do what it liked. So he ignored it while it opened up Dean's wrists with what looked like Dean's bowie knife and while it used Dean's voice to beg Sam to help him, Sam just looked into the dead eyes and kept on walking.

Xxx

Sam was growing increasingly tired of fake Dean. He'd gone from being a terrifying vision for Sam to just plain irritating. But he still had to check the eyes every time he appeared; just on the off chance that it really was Dean. It was becoming more and more like him, it even had some of his facial expressions down but the eyes were always the same. So Sam didn't pay much attention when it hung itself from a tree, he just walked past while the Dean thing scowled in annoyance as it swayed on the end of Dean's own belt. He ignored it when it choked to death (Sam had no idea what it could possibly be choking on anyway) and he only flinched a little when Dean stood in front of him and said,

"_I'm dying Sam."_ Before landing face down in the snow and not moving.

Sam had steadfastly kept walking and ignored all of the cries for attention until the last one. Once again it appeared in front of him, and it smiled, a small knowing smile. It gave a small wave of the hand and vanished. The hazy light that had been enveloping Sam seemed to fade away as well. Sam was possibly more weirded out than before. All the other times it had made sure that Sam saw it kill itself in a grim way. Now, Sam got the distinct feeling that it knew something that he didn't.

He hadn't realised he'd been climbing a slope until he broke out of the trees. He was on some sort of rocky outcrop, the snow was thicker up here and he could see the white tree tops off the edge of the cliff.

Dead end. Fantastic.

But then he saw him there, standing twenty or so feet away with his back to him.

Sam dropped his head back in despair and stared up at the dark sky. "What do you want from us?"

He let his head loll back to the front and asked the question again. "What do you want from us? I know you understand me."

The figure in front of him turned, its movements jagged and uncoordinated. Sam narrowed his eyes as he gazed at his brother's face.

"Dean?"

Dean smiled. And it was Dean, Sam was sure of it, the eyes held the Dean Winchester spark, but there was still something off.

"Dean, man come on we have to get out of here." He took in his brother's appearance, he wanted to rush forwards and latch onto his brother, convince himself that he was real, but something was stopping him. "How are you even still standing?"

In the dim glow from the snow Dean looked deathly pale. The blood covering his torso stood out in stark comparison. In fact, Dean looked so much like the apparition that had been appearing to Sam, that he gave an involuntary shudder.

He took a tentative step forwards. "Dean, do you know what's going on?"

Dean in turn took a step towards his brother. He still hadn't said anything, he was just smiling, making his unsteady way forwards.

It hit Sam that he was afraid. Not just afraid of how the hell they were going to get out of here. He was afraid of Dean. Something about his brother was terrifying him, and he never got scared like this, he made a living out of hunting the things that scared the crap out of most people and right now he felt like a little kid scared of the monster under the bed. He fought the overwhelming urge to back away from Dean. Because this was Dean! He was crazy to be reacting like this; it had to be a combination of the cold, exhaustion and stress.

And yet he couldn't help it, the way Dean was looking at him, juddering towards him with those slow uncertain steps, not talking. He was freaked out, something was way off here.

"STOP!" Sam held out his hands as if to keep him at bay. "Dean, just stay there OK? Just don't come any closer, I need to think."

Dean stopped, cocked his head to the side and quirked an eyebrow. It seemed so like him and yet so wrong.

Sam struggled to think clearly, but the only clear thought was _Run_.

He took a deep breath _Think think think. What's wrong with him? What are you scared of? _

Dean was still standing in exactly the same spot, unmoving except for the tremors racking his frame. He still couldn't quite put his finger on why he was so damn terrified. He tried to absorb everything he could about Dean's appearance.

For the most part he looked exactly the way he'd appeared in the woods, and Sam had had time to analyse what needed to be done to save him. But it still wasn't the same, he seemed so full of life and yet so dead at the same time. His breath was rattling in but didn't seem to be coming out. It was like Dean was choking but he wasn't showing any signs of discomfort.

"Dean, does it hurt to breathe?" He ventured slowly.

Dean rolled his head round, his chin dipped towards his chest slightly and looked out from under his lashes. He shook his head painfully slowly.

"Can you talk?"

"Yes."

Sam was slightly taken aback by the fast response. It sounded like Dean, but there was something like an echo behind his voice.

"Dean," Sam swallowed past the awkward lump in his throat "do you remember what happened to you?"

"I was attacked by a Yeti Sammy." Sam felt another chill snake up his spine at Dean's voice, it was said in such a matter of fact way, but there was still that hollow edge, that haunting echo behind his words.

"No. I mean after that. After the church. How did you end up here?"

Dean smiled for a second "It's a secret."

Sam had the insane notion that Dean was playing with him, the knowing look he flashed him before he answered angered Sam, he didn't have time for games.

"Are you really my brother?"

"Yes."

"Are you possessed?"

"Nope."

"Then why won't you tell me?"

"Sammyyyyy. Where's the fun in that?"

Sam bit back a growl of frustration. What the hell was Dean doing? He still had the fear churning in his gut, but he knew that they didn't have time to screw around. He forced himself to slow down and think about this rationally, Dean could be in some weird kind of shock or something.

"Dean, we have to get you to the hospital."

Dean's voice was lightly chastising "Oh Sammy, now why would I want to do that? I like it out here? I like the snow remember?"

"Yeah well you can play in the snow when you're not bleeding out all over it. Dean please, please man you're freaking me out." Sam hated that he'd resorted to begging but he was getting desperate. His foggy brain couldn't work out why Dean was acting this way, and he wanted nothing more than for them both to be out of here, warm and safe. His mood kept shifting from angry to terrified, but either way he was anxious to have his brother back.

Dean turned away from him.

"You seen this view Sammy?"

Reluctantly Sam moved closer to Dean, standing a few paces away, still worried that he might turn on him or vanish again.

"I don't care about the view Dean, I care about you. I mean you can't even breathe man! I don't get how you can still be standing and talking with all the blood you've lost! You look like you're about to DIE!" Sam's voice had risen several octaves but Dean didn't seem to notice.

Dean didn't say anything for a while, there was just the sound of Sam's teeth chattering and Dean's breath struggling in, and then barely puffing back out. But the lack of air didn't seem to be having any effect on Dean. He didn't seem to be feeling the cold the way Sam was, even though he was clearly soaked to the skin.

"We don't have to leave Sam."

Sam just stared at him in disbelief.

"Erm, yeah, yeah we do Dean, we really have to leave."

Dean rounded on Sam so fast that he barely registered the movement until Dean was right in his face. His eyes locked on Sam's with such an intensity that Sam couldn't look away.

"I think we should stay Sam." Dean's voice was low and soothing, despite the eerie echo that clung to every word. Sam found himself relaxing; Dean's eyes looked so sure, his voice sounded so convincing, Sam started to wonder why they really needed to go back.

"I mean aren't you tired Sam? Tired of all of it, our lives, the responsibility. Wouldn't it be better to just sleep, just let someone else deal with all the crap?"

Sam nodded; speech seemed to have failed him. At the back of his mind he knew that they shouldn't be here, but Dean was his big brother and he trusted him. He didn't really feel too cold now anyway.

"It snows all the time here Sam. You know how I like the snow."

Dean had said that before, when? Just now, or a while ago. Sam couldn't be sure. He was tired and nothing was making much sense anymore, but his brother was here, he was looking into his eyes and they were safe and told him to trust him.

Dean backed away from Sam towards the edge of the cliff. Sam didn't notice how alien his legs seemed to move, how they jerked and shook, but Dean just seemed to float.

"Come check out the view Sammy."

Sam felt himself propelled forwards, trusting nothing but his brother, he felt like he was five years old again and Dean was the boss. He stopped a little way from Dean though; something instinctual wouldn't let him go any further.

"Don't want to come any closer Sammy?" The side of Dean's mouth twitched in a grin and Sam again got the feeling that he knew something he wasn't letting on, the fog cleared a little but he was still confused.

"Don't you trust me Sammy? It's nice here I promise." He paused, the smile on his face grew more cunning "I'll tell you the secret if you come here Sammy."

His name, the way Dean kept saying his name wasn't quite right, it seeped into the foreground of Sam's thoughts and suddenly his voice worked again.

"Come away from the edge Dean." He held out a placating hand.

Dean met his eyes again "Why don't you come towards the edge Sammy."

Sam felt the pull again, felt the urge to just surrender and do what he was told. But his instincts were trying desperately to kick in, and with an effort he wrenched his eyes away from Dean's.

"Dean. Think about what you're doing? Come to me."

"But Sammy," Dean's words were slow and soft, each syllable dripping with conviction "I like it here. It snows all the time here Sammy."

"Stop saying my name like that! And stop talking about the damn snow Dean! It's just snow! It doesn't snow all the time!"

"It does where I am." Something about the way Dean said that made the fear return with renewed strength and it took everything Sam had not to look into Dean's eyes, to keep it together.

"It doesn't where I am Dean, come to where I am. Please! Just come away from the edge."

"Ah Sammy, I think you know I can't do that. Shame, I thought we could do this together." Everything about what Dean was saying was wrong, the pace, the tone, the damn words themselves.

"Do what together? Do what together Dean?"

"I think you know. Doesn't matter though, you'll change your mind soon enough."

Panic erupted inside Sam, "DEAN STAY WHERE YOU ARE! DO YOU HEAR ME! DON'T MOVE!"

But Dean was moving, he was calmly backing away from Sam again, getting closer to the edge. Grinning wide on his face, his eyes lit up with malicious joy.

Then Sam was running, sprinting towards Dean as fast as he could, but Dean was faster.

Sam could almost reach out and touch him when Dean chuckled and said

"See ya soon Sammy." Before he stepped backwards off the edge of the cliff.


	5. Chapter 5

A.N. Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry! I am absolutely mortified that I haven't updated since May! To anyone following this story I am incredibly sorry, I had a very hectic Summer and every time I opened the document to write I couldn't come up with anything.

I'm afriad this isn't the longest chapter and I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but hopefully it will make up for the long break while I work on the next chapter. Again I'm so sorry and thank you to anyone who reads and reviews.

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Sam lunged forwards and clamped his hand down on Dean's wrist. For a second they both seemed to hang there. Time slowed to a standstill and Sam managed to register the shock in his brother's eyes before Dean's body disappeared over the edge and Sam's arm was yanked forwards causing him to cry out in pain and he was dragged on his belly to the precipice. They finally managed to find some equilibrium and stopped moving.

For a several long seconds there was nothing but silence. Sam was frozen to the spot, his muscles straining with the effort of holding onto Dean's heavy weight.

Eventually a bewildered and angry voice drifted up to Sam.

"Sammy! What the hell is going on!"

Then time seemed to catch up, Sam became aware of the incredible effort it took to stop Dean from plummeting to the ground. He had started sliding steadily as well, until eventually he could peer over the outcrop. What he saw there nearly caused him to release his tenuous hold on his brother.

It wasn't too far to the ground, you might just survive if you fell, but you wouldn't survive for long. The inevitable broken bones would make it almost impossible to get to help from out here in the middle of nowhere and now Sam could clearly see how all those bodies had met their demise.

Because far below, there they all were. All the bodies that Sam had passed were scattered below the outcrop, he could see the eerie pathway that they created and that was just where Dean was going to end up if Sam couldn't save him.

"Shit! Sam! Pull me up!" Dean's voice was high with terror and he was jerking in Sam's grip from involuntarily kicking his legs.

"Dean, stay still." Sam grunted out, his brother was no lightweight.

Sam had managed to hook his toes onto a crack in the rock, (at least he thought he had, he still couldn't much of anything) and thankfully it had stopped the forward pull so that now they were just stuck. Sam's numb fingers could barely hold on and he didn't think he had the strength to do anything more than just keep Dean from falling.

"Is there...anything I can drop you onto?" Sam was sweating with the exertion now.

"No! No there's nothing, just a shit load of bodies! Sam pull me up now!"

"Dean I ca..." Sam rested his forehead on the cold ground, his free hand was freezing and soaking wet from where he was scrabbling for purchase on the frosty ground. Cautiously he reached his free hand over the edge to where he could just about see Dean's dripping wet hair suspended there.

"Reach up and grab my hand."

The muscles in Sam's arm were quivering with the effort from bearing all of the weight and Sam bit down on his lip in an effort to distract himself.

"Dean please you have to help."

He heard Dean's sharp intake of breath and the swinging increase as Dean attempted to reach for Sam's outstretched hand, no doubt tugging on his open wound. Sam wondered again how the hell Dean was still alive after all he'd been through.

_One thing at a time Sam._

He felt Dean's fingertips brush his own and fall away again. He could feel his grip on Dean's wrist loosening, his hand was slippery with sweat and numb from the cold.

"Dean I can't hold on much longer, you have to grab my hand!" Sam yelled down.

"I'm trying Sam!" Dean snapped back before Sam heard him grunt in effort and then he felt he's brother's hand wrap around his own with surprising strength. Sam clamped his hand around Dean's with all his might.

Sam's shoulder's felt like they were going to pop right out of the sockets.

"Ok I'm going to pull you up." Sam positioned himself as best he could and started hauling Dean back to safety. He'd only pulled him a few inches when his protesting muscles gave out and Dean almost slipped from his grip, he managed to tighten his hold as Dean slid back out of sight and they both let out yells of pain when their shoulders wrenched at the sudden force.

"Dammit Sam!"

"I'm trying!"

Sam flexed his muscles again, his arms were screaming in pain and he could no longer feel his fingers but slowly he managed to drag his brother upwards, he shuffled back slightly and gingerly shifted his hold as Dean neared the top and together they managed to haul him back onto solid ground.

Xxx

For Dean, it was quite a rude awakening. One minute he'd been in a state of ecstasy, vaguely aware of his body but he didn't care what he was doing or saying, he just wanted to stay here.

Sam was there, he was pretty sure they were talking but he couldn't tell what they were saying and he wasn't really bothered. If Sam was here too then they had a pretty sweet deal going on.

Then it all went straight to hell, he crashed back into himself just after he stepped back over an immense nothingness. Sam was there and Sam was running, running towards him. Everything happened so slowly, in what could only have been milliseconds, he had time to process his body's desperate need for oxygen. Instinctively he inhaled an incredible blissful gasp of frigid winter air as the pain returned with a vengeance. At the same time he was falling backwards, his eyes locked on Sam's as he slipped back over the precipice.

He wasn't too sure what happened next but suddenly his arm was yanked brutally and he found himself suspended above the ground, dangling in mid-air.

He struggled to register what exactly was happening, how had he ended up suspended over a massive drop? A massive drop with a shit load of bodies at the bottom nonetheless. Instinctively he started kicking out. His heart was thundering in his chest and he was pretty sure he'd left his stomach about six feet above him.

"Sammy! What the hell is going on?"

There was silence from above, the only clue Dean had that Sam was even conscious was the intense death grip on his wrist. He realised that he was steadily slipping further, the grip on his wrist remained the same which meant that they were both sliding, and if Sam didn't do something soon then they'd both join the grisly display below.

"Shit! Sam! Pull me up!"

"Dean, stay still." Finally Sam's voice grated out to him, he sounded pained and exhausted. Finally they stopped moving and Dean put all his energy into staying as still as possible.

"Is there...anything I can drop you onto?"

Dean tentatively glanced down, swallowing down the nausea at the macabre scene.

"No! No there's nothing, just a shit load of bodies! Sam, pull me up now!"

"Dean I ca..."

Dean waited with bated breath, Sam couldn't fall apart.

"Reach up and grab my hand."

He couldn't move, he was frozen, scared that if he did something to disturb the uneasy equilibrium they were caught in then they'd both fall to their deaths.

"Dean please you have to help."

Dean mentally instructed himself to get a grip and reached up to grab Sam's hand. He gasped sharply as he felt pain jolt across his abdomen at the movement. On the next swing he only brushed Sam's fingertips. He let his arm fall down again; he was shivering and sweating with the exertion.

"Dean I can't hold on much longer, you have to grab my hand!" Sam sounded frantic.

"I'm trying Sam!" Dammit it wasn't like he was working at full capacity here. But still, the corpses down below seemed like they were reaching out to him, promising them both a place in their army of the dead and Dean was not ready to die yet, not after this suck fest of a night. With his waning strength he made a last ditch attempt and lunged for his brother's hand, clinging to it with all his might.

"Ok I'm going to pull you up."

Sam didn't waste much time before Dean felt himself moving up. The pain in his arms was excruciating but soon he'd be safe on solid ground. He was promising himself that he'd never put himself near a plane or a sharp drop ever again when he heard Sam gasp and he suddenly dropped. His heart was in his throat and the only way his panicked brain could tell he'd stopped falling was the brutal yanking of his arms.

"Dammit Sam!" He couldn't help yelling, he didn't do well with heights at the best of times.

"I'm trying!"

With agonizing slowness, Sam began dragging him back to safety. Dean's arms were screaming in pain, his hands were slick and he was trembling with the exertion of holding on. It must be ten times harder for Sam, having to haul up his sorry ass. After what seemed like an eternity, Sam managed to get him high enough that he could help clamber back over the edge.

Once his butt hit solid rock, he used the last of his strength to scuttle back from the edge and then collapsed in an ungraceful heap. Breathing heavily and trying to get his heart to stop kicking up such a fuss.

He stared up at the sky; the slightest promise of dawn was beginning to creep onto the horizon. The adrenaline coursing through his veins heightened his senses. He was hyper aware of the birds beginning the dawn chorus, the sound of his heart beating, of Sam's laboured breathing, everything.

After what seemed like hours but was more likely a minute at most, he heard Sam shift.

"What the hell was that?" Sam's anger was practically radiating off him and all Dean could do was lie there and absorb everything.

"Damn it Dean answer me!" Sam was on his feet now, worried and angry and freaked all at the same time.

"I don't know." There was no point in shouting, no need for raised voices; Dean could see that, he could see everything.

"You don't know! Dean you threw yourself off a cliff and you don't know? Were you trying to kill yourself?"

"It wasn't me Sam. Well it was me but I was somewhere else." Was he making sense? He knew what he meant; Sam just needed to chill a bit. He watched the sky, watched his breath make smoky tendrils.

Sam was reeling off his list of questions, demanding to know every detail; he was always so picky about the details. Dean answered them quietly and simply, no he didn't remember what had happened, no he didn't remember getting there, no he had no idea what had dragged him through the woods and no he didn't remember anything since being snatched from the church. Ok well that last part was technically a lie, but Sam seemed have experienced something similar himself from the way he was ranting on and it was just easier to play dumb.

Finally Sam stopped his barrage of questions, mumbled "_Shit" _and dropped to his knees next to Dean and started poking and prodding at him again.

At least Dean couldn't feel the sharp stabbing pain when Sam jabbed at his open wound, the numbness was setting in again, but his mind was sharp. Sam was still talking at him, muttering pointless words of comfort with the occasional swear word thrown in.

"Dean, can you walk? I need you to get up man." It wasn't like Sam was giving him much choice in the matter; he'd already positioned himself behind him and had hooked him under his arms. Dean supposed he should try and help but his feet slipped on the icy snow, (which was quickly turning to slush with all Sam's thrashing about) and Dean figured it would just be easier to let Sam haul him up.

Once on his feet, Sam was there in his face, one steadying hand gripping his bicep firmly, the other snapping his fingers in front of Dean's eyes. Dean was already plenty focused damn it! He'd just rather conserve most of his energy on staying alive rather than inane conversation.

Sam's lips pursed in annoyance when he didn't get the response he wanted. Unwilling to waste any more time he slung Dean's arm over his shoulders and Dean found himself being dragged along on alien feet listening to Sam mutter about shock and getting out of there, and how they'd find their way back through the woods and before they knew it they'd be at the car.

Dean didn't say anything, it seemed like Sam was trying to convince himself that they'd just saunter out of the woods ok. Dean knew differently, he could tell from the sensation of eyes burning into his back, from the way his sharpened hearing picked up the softest footfalls from the trees. He wouldn't say anything to Sam yet though; there was nothing he could do, no point in giving him more to worry about.

Dean wasn't so sure that they'd make it out of the woods at all. Yeti wounds, hypothermia, and being lost in the middle of fricking nowhere were huge odds stacked against them. Not to mention the fact that they were being followed.

Xxx

They were not going nearly as fast as Sam would like. Dean was almost a dead weight at his side, his breathing was laboured and he was horrifically pale. He'd been coherent and responsive before but now he was growing increasingly sluggish again, Sam figured it was either shock or just his body shutting down that explained his unusual behaviour. Sam couldn't give up on him though, the fact that Dean was depending on him was the only thing preventing him from curling up on a ball on the ground and going to sleep.

He was starting to hear things as well. Repeatedly he had whipped round when he thought his name was whispered in the darkness, or when he heard the crunch of footsteps on the frigid ground or when he felt the soft tickle of breath on the back of his neck. He was making himself paranoid; he was so weary he could no longer tell what was hunter's instinct and what was just his stressed mind playing tricks on him. Nevertheless he continued to peer into the grey darkness, the faintest hints of dawn were more suffocated under the thick canopy of trees and the light teased him with imagined figures that danced swiftly out of his line of sight. He went on like this for some time, until Dean dragged his lolling head up with what looked like considerable effort and fixed him with sunken eyes.

"Save your energy Sam. S'nothing we can do about it yet. If you're scared of him it's easier for him to take you." They had reached the pathway of the dead and Sam watched Dean's eyes scan over the carcases, he stared back at Sam from under his lashes, his face dark and Sam once again got the feeling his brother knew something he didn't. Dean flashed him a sinister half smile "And you really don't want him to take you Sam." He let his head roll back down as if the strain of holding it up was too much.

Sam winced as he felt a bone snap under his foot "What does that mean Dean?"

Dean's gravelly voice rose up without him raising his head this time. "Just don't be scared Sammy."

Instead of pushing Dean for more answers, Sam bit back the questions on his tongue and forced himself to put all his energy into getting them out of the woods. He ignored the sensation of long fingernails being traced over his back, the powerful feeling of someone walking right behind him, the figure he caught sight of in the trees, watching them silently on the edge of his peripheral vision and the way the wind seemed to whisper his name, oh so invitingly.

Xxx

"We're lost."

"No...shit...Sherlock."

"Don't you think you should save your energy for something useful like breathing instead of using it up on cheap shots?"

"...Bite...me..."

Sam tried not to dwell on how much it irritated him that despite having to take deep, painful sounding breaths just to get his words out, Dean insisted on having the last word. Stubborn bastard.

"I'm serious Dean. What the hell are we going to do?"

"Ask it...nicely...to let us go?"

"Brilliant." Sam felt a small flare of embarrassment that Dean somehow knew about his plea to be let out of the church. He pushed the thought aside, amazed that it had only been a few hours ago.

"You got any better suggestions Dean? Because by rights you shouldn't even be breathing right now!"

"Good...to know you have such faith... in my ability to survive...Sa-"

"Oh shut up."

They trudged through the snow, Dean leaning heavily on Sam, wheezing painfully, using what little strength he had to wrap his arm around his midsection. Although the wound had pretty much stopped bleeding. Probably to do with the cold slowing his heart rate down, Sam though bitterly.

Exhaustion was making Sam sluggish, his mind kept wandering off, thinking about anything else to keep from thinking about what was lurking in the shadows. He'd thought about taking a shot at it but it moved too fast and he was too weak. He was envisioning an enormous mug of cocoa. Proper cocoa, made with milk not hot water, it wasn't the same if it wasn't made with milk. A huge mug of hot chocolatey bliss, with those mini marshmallows floating on top. During his childhood, when it snowed was one of those rare occasions when he and Dean got to behave like children. They'd play outside for hours until their fingers were tingling with the cold, their cheeks pink and Dad would call them in to warm up. They'd change into warm clothes and Dad would fix the three of them a mug of hot cocoa, complete with marshmallows. He'd usually head to the store to stock up while they were playing.

Sam was imagining that he was one of those mini marshmallows, bobbing contentedly on a sea of warm chocolate, occasionally bumping gently into another marshmallow, exchanging pleasantries, the way mini marshmallows do. He didn't notice that they'd stopped walking, or that Dean was trying to get his attention.

"Sam? Damn it Sammy, snap out of it! Wipe that dopey look off your face!"

Sam looked down at his brother with a contented smile "Are you enjoying the chocolate Dean?"

Bewildered concern flashed across Dean's face. "One problem at a time yeah Sam? You wanna snap out of it? We have a slightly more pressing issue."

Sam blinked and focused on his brother's face, a bit too disappointed that he wasn't actually a marshmallow with no care for issues such as his brother's.

"That's it. Sam, look at me. Don't freak out, but up ahead there are two things that look very much like us."

"Huh?"

Dean looked exasperated, it was the first time since Sam had dragged him back over the cliff edge that he'd seen some life in his brother, instead of the disturbing sense that he knew something he was keeping from Sam.

"Our freaking doppelganger's are stood over there staring right at us Sam!" Dean winced as if the strain of talking was causing him physical pain. With his injuries, it probably was, Sam though philosophically.

Frustrated that Sam didn't seem to be reacting; Dean grabbed his chin and turned his head so that his eyes settled on the apparitions in front of them.

Dean _and _Sam this time. They stood there, thirty feet in front of them, bloodied and haggard, cheerfully smiling and waving.

"Oh them." Sam chuckled "Don't worry they'll kill themselves in a minute." He chuckled again at the expression on his brother's face. "Just watch Dean."

"Sam, shoot them!"

"I told you Dean, they'll be dead in a minute." Sam calmly turned his attention back to the apparitions, huddling closer to his brother to try and keep him warm while they stood still, slightly irritated that he'd given Dean all his clothes, but he'd let it go, he was a good brother like that. Dean was still cold; he tightened his grip even more, all the while never taking his eyes off the Sam and Dean in front of them. He felt Dean start to squirm a bit under his grip, poor Dean couldn't tell how cold he was, but Sam wouldn't let him go again.

Up ahead, their clones were still waving and grinning, then satisfied they had their attention, seemed to launch into a sketch that would have been more at home on the Three Stooges, Sam pulled out a gun and shot Dean in the chest and Dean, annoyed at this, stabbed Sam through the throat. They then both collapsed to the ground while their blood painted the white snow a sinister shade of red.

"What the hell was that?" Dean whispered

"Don't worry, we'll keep going and they'll disappear. They'll do something different next time."

"Sam you're seriously starting to freak me out. Can you snap out of it?"

"Everything's fine Dean. You're just cold." Sam pulled Dean even closer until his brother grunted with discomfort.

"Sam, you want to loosen up a bit, if we ever make it out of here, I'd rather my ribs weren't crushed as well."

"Don't be frightened." Sam craned his neck to look at his brother and Dean didn't like the shadows he saw in his eyes, "Remember you told me not to be frightened Dean?"

Xxx

Dean stumbled blindly through the trees, he was moving too slowly but he couldn't help it. Every step sent pain tearing across his abdomen and he was running on fumes. The footsteps behind him were getting closer now, but they were calm, unhurried. He knew Dean was injured, knew there was no reason to rush; it chilled Dean how sure the footsteps were.

"Shit!" He stumbled and crashed to his knees. He pushed himself to his feet, there wasn't time to stop. He had to keep moving and think. His mind was working too slowly, it wouldn't come up with a coherent plan now and it had been too late to react before. He could have kicked himself that he'd been that slow off the mark.

"Come on Dean, stop running. You're just dragging this out you know." If Dean could feel his body enough to shiver, he would have. The voice that floated through the trees was haunting, repulsive and yet enticing at the same time.

His eyelids ached with the need to close. The pull of the voice was so strong that he could easily give in and succumb to the darkness. But he knew what lay beyond that darkness, he could remember now. It wasn't death, it was something far far worse, something he'd glimpsed when he'd been under its thrall. There was no way he was going back there.

"_Deeeean. Come out come out wherever you are."_ And there was no way in hell that he was going to leave Sam there.

Tbc.

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Thanks to any readers and all reviews are greatly appreciated.


	6. Chapter 6

A.N. I know I said this before, but I am sincerely sorry to anyone that's still reading this that I haven't updated in so long. I have been struggling with just getting it written. There is more to come soon after this and I'm aiming to have it completed before I go travelling next month. Again, I'm really sorry, not sure how happy I am with this chapter but I hope anyone reading it enjoys it.

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The silence was unbroken. It was thick, almost suffocating. The wind wasn't rustling the trees, the singing of the birds was ominously absent and the threatening crunch of footsteps had long since faded.

Dean couldn't be sure when the silence had fallen. He struggled to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, and right now that thing was _run!_

As he struggled through the woods, numb toes apparently doing their damndest to trip over anything they could find, he could feel it niggling at the back of his mind, the sensation that something had changed. And then it hit him like a lightning bolt. He was alone. He stopped dead in his tracks, lungs burning from the frigid air. There was nothing. Silence. He spun round, eyes scanning the darkness, searching frantically for a shadow standing in the trees, watching him. Nothing.

"_Sam." _The name ghosted out of Dean's mouth as adrenaline was pushed aside by a new surge of panic. He couldn't have lost his brother in these woods, not again. How could he not have noticed he'd gone? It'd been bad enough when his little brother had got a strange look in his eyes that had told Dean that Sam had left the building, a little worse when Sam had tried to suffocate the life out of him and now that he'd disappeared where Dean couldn't even keep an eye on him, it was just plain shitty.

But the silence, it was just wrong. The only sound was his breath whispering in and out, and the blood thundering in his ears. Was he dead? Had he bled out? Tripped and just gone to sleep in the snow? Or had Sam simply caught up to him and hugged him to death.

If he was dead then he was going to be so pissed off.

Was he dead? Sure he didn't feel the pain quite as acutely anymore. It had settled to a dull throbbing and the cold wasn't as piercing. But there were loads of reasons for that. Adrenaline, shock, blood loss, the list went on. _Or you're dead_ that little voice in his head kindly provided.

No way. He couldn't be dead. If he was, it was a shitty ass limbo. _It's got you Dean. All your fighting did nothing, because it would inevitably get you in the end. And now it's got Sam too._

"Shut up." Dean grumbled at his subconscious. He tried to quell the growing panic in his mind, how could he save Sam when he couldn't even save himself?

Then he heard something. Or thought he heard something. A whisper in the darkness. He strained to hear, struggling to silence his loud breaths that were rattling in and out of his chest. The all encompassing silence was almost painful.

It was faint, but it was there. It had to be, he didn't care if it was leading him to his doom, if it led him to Sam that was all that mattered. As stealthily as was possible he stepped one foot forwards, he didn't know why he was trying to be so quiet, it knew where he was, it was playing with him, but if he could keep going like it was a regular hunt then maybe he could cling to some semblance of control.

He winced at the sound of the snow crunching under his boots. The sound was almost offensive in the suffocating stillness.

He thought he heard the whisper again, pulling him forwards, pulling him towards Sam. They were screwed, the sudden thought caused him to laugh and he clamped a hand down on his mouth to prevent any more noise. Huh, hysterical laughter was usually more Sam's bag, but he really wanted to laugh at how utterly and fantastically screwed they were. He had no weapons, no idea what they were fighting, no idea where the hell they were and pretty much no chance of survival. If this wasn't the time for hysteria then he didn't know what was.

So he let a bit more of the giggle out, then a bit more and a bit more until his laughter boomed around the forest. Then as quickly as it had come, it was gone, taking his waning strength with it. His legs gave out and he sank to his knees, he stared at the ground, waiting for the icy cold to seep through his jeans. It didn't come. He couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything anymore, hadn't really for a long time. It was an odd sensation, knowing the pain and cold was there, but feeling nothing.

"Didn't you wonder why you're still alive Dean?"

His head snapped up. He hadn't heard anything approaching, hadn't sensed anything watching him. But now Sam was there, standing in the trees, face hidden by the darkness. He couldn't tell if he was relieved or terrified. Sam's voice had an inhuman echo, something behind it that would make grown men run crying to their mothers.

"Where's Sam?"

The figure in the trees was quiet for a long time, until Dean wanted to scream at it to hurry the hell up. And he would have done if he wasn't so damn scared.

"I'm here Dean. I like it here...You liked it too remember? I remember how you like the snow_."_

Dean's voice had left him, he couldn't think what to do.

"It snows all the time here Dean."

Dean's breath stuttered to a halt in his throat. Sam was moving forwards, stepping out of the shadows, out to where the snow made the earth shine. The shadows were sliding up and away from his face; soon Dean would be able to see his eyes. Oh God, he couldn't look into those eyes again, he remembered what was there now, underneath the tranquillity and bliss.

"Stop!" He blurted out, thrusting a hand forwards as if that could keep him back. As if it could stop the shadows moving and keep his eyes away. Surprisingly Sam stopped, his eyes mercifully hidden in the darkness.

His focus blurred from Sam to his outstretched hand, his fingers were a sickening shade of white and they looked kind of prune-y. His hand was trembling but he couldn't tell if it was from the cold or from the exertion of keeping his arm held out. He had to think, forget about his stupid hand and just think. But it was so hard to concentrate, his mind kept drifting, losing track. The world tilted on its axis and he shut his eyes against the wave of nausea that threatened to overpower him. At least he thought he did, or was some part of him just remembering that he had to try not to hurl. His vision tunnelled, the edges fading like an old photo, until the only thing he could see was his hand. His hand that didn't feel connected to him anymore. It was still stretched out, trembling, everything else was in darkness. A confusing, suffocating blackness that was closing in further and further. Solid and all-encompassing. Only it wasn't, not quite, the blackness was breathing, pulsating with shapes that had slid out of the trees and into his eyes.

It wasn't right, he didn't like it, the shadows were in his eyes and he couldn't escape them. He was aware of Sam, still standing in the same spot, quietly surveying him as he wrenched his head to the side to try and shake the writhing shadows away.

He could almost tell what the shapes were - he knew, at the back of his mind already - but there was too much confusion, too many things crying urgently for attention and he couldn't grab hold of any of those thoughts. He made a guttural, choked sound when one of the shadows momentarily shifted from the rest and nearly lurched into focus before it was snatched back. There was something else too, a sound he could almost hear; a sound he didn't want to hear.

"I can't..."

"Think?" Sam's voice was reasonable, understanding and terrifying. "You don't need to think Dean. You're tired. Let me think for you."

Dean squeezed his eyes closed, desperately trying to force the shadows away, they were still moving, still trying to be seen.

"I mean look at yourself Dean. You've lost a lot of blood, you're weak and lost. Even if we find the car I don't think you'll make it to a hospital. Why don't we just stay here?"

With considerable effort, Dean trained his blurry eyes on Sam, or at least the vague outline of him.

"Why don't you bite me?"

"There _are_ things in this wood that bite Dean." The swiftness and deadly promise that Sam delivered the statement with froze Dean's next retort on his tongue.

He winced as the pain in his head from the unheard sound intensified. By the time it subsided Sam was right in front of him. Down on one knee, making it damn hard for Dean not to meet his eyes. He stared at Sam's knees instead, trying to concentrate on the wet denim that stuck awkwardly to his brother's juddering legs. Sammy hated the feeling of wet jeans, no matter what had just happened, whether they'd been caught in the rain or taken an unscheduled swim in a lake after getting their asses kicked yet again, he'd always bitch about how he hated the feel of wet jeans. He had the sickening notion that Sam's jeans would never be dry again.

"Let go Dean." Dean kept his eyes fixated on the wet denim, trying his damndest to ignore the unsettling echo behind his brother's voice and the way that he kept saying his name like that, constant and insistent.

"What are you?" He mumbled

"I'm your brother Dean."

Dean shook his head slowly, painfully "No, you're just wearing him like a f-f-freaking hat."

"Come with me Dean. Don't you remember? You liked it where I am."

He shook his head again "No...Just... make me think...I do." God he was tired, his eyelids were so heavy and the effort of trying to ignore the shadows in his eyes was exhausting.

"We could stay here. Forever."

"Forever ain't very long...when you're bleeding to death."

"You don't need to worry about that Dean."

"Stop saying my name like that and give me back my brother." Dean growled with a sudden surge of energy.

"I'm right here. Come and get me. Dean."

It was screwing with him, it knew he was helpless and it was just messing with him now.

"If I look at you, we both die."

"What makes you think you're not dead already Dean?"

"You're still a pain in my ass for starters. Think I'll stick around long enough to get rid of you."

"Or you could just follow me. I know a place where we can lie in the snow and look at the trees." Sam paused "The best spots have already been taken, but I can fit us in." There was a laugh behind his words, a threat and a promise at the same time and Dean remembered the trail of corpses left undiscovered in the woods.

"It snows all the time here Dean."

"Yeah well snow's no fun if it happens all the damn time."

"If we leave the snow then you'll be dead Dean."

Dean's voice was dripping with sarcasm as he defiantly snapped his head up to face his brother, carefully avoiding looking directly into his eyes. It looked like Sam, it was the same body he knew better than anyone else, but it wasn't Sam. There was something lying under the surface, Sam was moving in small jerks that he seemed not to notice. He reminded Dean of one of those stop-motion monsters from those old movies. His breathing was off, stuttery and shallow and the shadows in his eyes pulled at Sam's face, warping it. "Why? Are we in a freaking snow globe or something?"

Dean could hear the smile in his brother's voice "Or something."

Sam paused, titled his head jerkily to the side as if listening and rose to his feet "Time to go now Dean."

Dean grunted, his foggy mind trying frantically to come up with a way out of this. It seemed like Sam was losing patience with him, now when he spoke his alien voice was sharp, the sound was like icicles slicing through Dean's flesh.

"I know you see them Dean. Just let them in, it'll be...easier."

"No."

Sam sighed, or would have sighed if his breathing was anything near normal instead of those stuttering gasps. For a moment it was like it was really Sam, and Dean briefly thought that this was a delirious nightmare brought on by blood loss and the most intense cold he had ever felt. Whenever Sam got exasperated with his brother (which was often) he would stop, take a breath to calm himself down and adopt what he assumed was a sensible tone in order to communicate with his unreasonable brother. Most times Dean would tell him where to shove his high and mighty attitude and he would have done now if he hadn't found himself nose to nose with his brother, transfixed on his eyes. Trying so hard to pull away but really really not wanting to.

"You know if you don't come with me you'll die, don't you Dean?" Sam's tone was reasonable, suddenly he was making so much sense and Dean found that he was nodding slowly, like a wind-up toy that needed cranking up again.

"Nobody dies here Dean...They're all still alive...The lonely souls..." Sam's voice was slow, gentle, soothing and the darkness that was closing in didn't feel so bleak anymore.

"We can stay with them Dean...You and I...We'll just...stay...frozen in time..."

Dean had been drifting, losing his tenuous grip on the world, the shadows were pulling softly at him now, dragging him to where it was comfortable and warm. Then something in Sam's words seeped through to him _frozen in time_. He gasped sharply, half lidded eyes shooting open, he tried to jerk away from the shadows, but it was too late. They had him. He could see them now. He could hear them, hear them screaming. Torturous wails of fear and pain. He could see their faces, twisted in macabre grins, laughing and screaming at the same time. Their faces were frozen, but their eyes, their eyes howled out to him for help. He tried to scurry back, scrambling for purchase on the frigid ground, but the shadows weren't just in his eyes anymore. The shadows were figures, bodies with skeletal fingers that snaked up his hand and clamped down with a cold that pulled his remaining strength away and dragged him to them to join them in the shadows.

Tbc. I promise.


	7. Chapter 7

A.N Hello, I'm back. I'd like to thank anyone that is still following this story, I sincerely appreciate it. I've spent the past few months travelling so haven't had time to update, but I'm back on British soil now and the story should be finished in the next couple of weeks. I hope you enjoy.

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"_Dean!" _Couldn't that kid leave him alone for five minutes? He was busy dammit. He was...What was he doing?

"_SAAAAAAM!" _Oh that's right. He was screaming, howling out his brother's name. Only...was he? Was he making any sound at all?

He was floating, gliding along the ground, but he felt so heavy. Why did he feel so heavy when he could move so fast? He had to assess the situation. How did he do that again?

"_SAAAAAAM!" _Oh, there it was again, that blood curdling scream of panic and despair that felt like it should have come from him...But it hadn't, he hadn't even opened his mouth...Had he?

What was he doing again?

"_DEAN!" _That's right, he was assessing the situation. That was his job, assess the situation, fix the situation, hold dominion over the situation.

So where was he again? Thoughts kept scratching at the edges of his mind and as soon as he tried to focus on them they flitted from his grasp.

It was dark. That much he could tell. A darkness so complete that it dazzled him, blinded him. But that wasn't right either, because he could see, he could see his fingertips dancing deftly over every tree and branch as he went wiffling through the woods. He thought he was moving too fast to touch everything, but he could see his fingers, moving so swiftly and with such power. But were they his fingers? He couldn't feel the bark beneath his fingertips, but they looked like his, the way his right index finger was slightly crooked from a dodgy break, that hangnail on his thumb that he hadn't been able to stop picking at for weeks now.

But then at the same time he was looking at Sam's hands. They had to be Sam's hands, because Dean didn't know anyone else with hands the size of bear paws. He didn't know what was going on, and he really didn't care. Did he care? It felt like he should care. Or maybe it was Sam that cared, seeing as it was Sam's hands he could see and he was a good four inches higher off the ground than he was used to.

"_DEAN!"_ Maybe it was him that was screaming his own name. He really couldn't be sure of too much at all right now. He thought there might be lots of different voices, all screaming. It was hard to think straight with all these voices in his head...or Sam's head. If they'd just shut up for two freaking minutes maybe he could figure out who the hell he was.

Whoever he was, he was rushing. He could tell from the way the trees flew by so fast. It occurred to him that he shouldn't be moving that fast, it wasn't safe when you had an injury like...like...what kind of injury did he have again?

"_DE-_AN!" With a bone rattling jolt he found himself on the ground, sucking in a breath of frigid air in desperation. Something was wrong; his limbs were all uneven lengths, what the hell had happened to him? There were too many of them as well, too many arms and too many legs. He was about to teeter over into freak out mode when one of the legs moved without him telling it to and he realised it was Sam. The extra, freakishly long limbs belonged to his brother who was sprawled underneath him.

"Sammy? What the hell? Ow." He snaked a hand across his midsection as Sam wriggled out from under him.

"Dean? Is that you in there?" Sam hauled Dean up to his knees and started pawing at him while Dean did his best to swat his brother's hands away from where they were prodding at his stomach and pulling at his eyelids.

"Dude! Quit it!"

Sam dropped back down so his butt hit the snow, his chest heaving with the effort to get his breath back.

"We're in trouble here, aren't we?"

Dean smirked, "No shit."

"What do you think it is?"

Dean shook his head "I don't..."

"Dean?"

Dean kept his eyes carefully trained on Sam, "Keep looking right at me Sammy. Right in my eyes...Don't look at him."

They stared at each other, not daring to even blink. Hyper aware of the figure standing at the edge of their peripheral vision. Watching them.

"You got a plan Dean?"

"Nope. You?"

"No. What are we going to do? I mean we can't just keep ignoring him and hope he goes away...Can we?" They were keeping their voices low through force of habit, they both knew it could hear everything.

"We could give it a go. I don't have too much else going on right now."

"Can you give the damn jokes a rest for five minutes?! We need to figure out a plan fast! I mean seriously Dean, do you have an extra blood supply that I don't know about or something?"

"Yeah...about that. I uh...get the feeling that it might be sort of...keeping me alive."

The look on Sam's face was part pissed off (though what the hell he'd done to piss his little brother off this time, he had no idea) and part resigned, as if he should have expected this all along.

"Come again?"

"I was talking to him, when he was you and...and he...uh..."

"Dude?"

"Don't...feel so..." Dean's vision swam, Sam doubled, then tripled and then he couldn't tell which set of eyes belonged to his brother. So he closed his eyes, closed his eyes and waited for his vision to clear. When he looked again he was on his back in the snow. Sam was knelt above him, his mop of hair whipping from side to side as he checked the trees frantically. As the shadows crept in again, Dean knew it had been a trick. It was never going to let them go for long.

Xxx

They were darting forwards again. Faster than before, he could almost feel a sense of urgency. Almost, but not quite, because he was being overwhelmed with the invasion of wailing souls. They were everywhere, all hitching a ride in his body, his brother's body, their pain was so complete that he couldn't think, couldn't really focus on anything but the rushing and the screaming and then suddenly he was on the ground again, face buried in an armpit.

He heard Sam groan as he was once again dragged into an upright position.

"This is getting seriously old man."

"Why do you think it keeps letting us go?"

"You're never happy are you Sam?"

"No I'm not. Not when it's clearly playing with us." He paused and Dean could practically see the effort it took Sam not to look away into the trees where he knew it was calling for him. He could feel it calling for him too.

"What did you mean, he's keeping you alive?"

"We can't die here Sam. Nothing dies here."

"Um, there's a shit load of dead bodies that might disagree with you Dean."

"Think about it Sam, back at that church I could barely even stand up by myself, a few hours later I'm falling off cliffs and running all over the freaking woods! That sound normal to you?"

"You were in shock. You lost a lot of blood, it's adrenaline Dean."

"I thought so too, I'm not too sure now, I feel too...normal."

"That's just your brain playing tricks on you. You look like shit!" Despite his words, Dean could hear fresh doubt creeping into his brother's voice. "You still can't walk properly on your own Dean, you're cold, you can barely string a sentence together without stammering."

"Not now Sam, that was before. I mean don't get me wrong, I feel like I've been run over by a semi but...I'm ok. I should be getting worse, not better. And how about you Sam? How are you feeling?"

Sam looked perplexed at this, his brows furrowed and he seemed to ponder it. "Cold?"

"How cold? Frozen through? So cold you don't think you'll ever be warm again? Or just...chilly?"

"Chilly." Sam supplied reluctantly, "But Dean, that could mean anything. We could be in really deep hypothermia or something."

"Aint you Mr glass half full."

"Ok, say you're right. Say it's keeping us alive. What for? And we both saw those bodies Dean, they looked pretty dead to me."

"There still here Sam. They're all still here. They're in the shadows."

Sam blinked, he peered at Dean like maybe he had lost it, like maybe he was delirious and Sam had just wasted precious minutes entertaining Dean's crazy notions.

"I'm not crazy Sam. I know what I'm talking about."

"Do you mean they're...spirits?" Sam was talking slowly now, as if talking to Dean like he were a child would help matters.

"No, not spirits. I don't...know. Can't you hear them screaming Sam?"

"So you're saying they're alive?"

"No, they're not alive. But...they're not dead and...I am aware how this sounds."

"Ok ok, I believe you. It's not like we have anything else to go on."

"This place is wrong Sammy." The intensity in Dean's eyes and the quiet warning in his voice chilled Sam to his very core.

Xxx

He couldn't remember how he'd arrived here again. Flat on his back in the snow, gazing up at the tree tops while his giant of a brother removed his elbow from where it was pressed painfully against his sternum.

"That sneaky bastard." Sam was muttering.

He remembered then, it had used his own voice. A quick, _Sammy be careful that isn't me_, from off in the woods and Sam hadn't been able to help it, he'd whipped his head round on pure instinct before Dean had been able to utter a sound. It had been fast that time, seizing them with a fury that Dean hadn't truly seen since it had taken him from the church. He'd tried to focus, to force his mind into awareness, but the screaming had overwhelmed him and the hands had pulled him down. He'd wriggled his way as close to the surface of his being as he could. He could see his hands again; the hands that he couldn't be sure were his own. They were grabbing at the trees now, using them to propel him forwards, and then there was something off to the side, something that made his head jerk round to see and then a force slammed him from the side again, slammed him back into his body and back onto the ground.

He squinted up at the trees. "Sammy?"

"Yeah?"

"It's getting light out."

"And?"

"Something about the light...Can't remember."

He struggled to focus what he was sure was crucial information, nestled away at the back of his mind. Something he'd been told?

He didn't have long to consider it because then Sam was hauling him none too gently to his feet. Cold determination on his face.

"Ok, here's the plan. We're just gonna focus on each other and just try and get out of here."

"That's the plan? That's a really crappy plan."

"If you've got a better one Dean then let's hear it!" Without waiting for a response Sam started walking –no-shuffling back the way they'd come. Hands clamped on Dean's shoulders, staring into his eyes with intensity, Sam crab-walked them through the woods.

"Sammy this is stupid."

"Just concentrate Dean."

"Come on man, how long you think we can keep this up? Besides, I don't want my legacy to be that I died...freaking side-stepping away from a monster. That shit's embarrassing."

"We can do it Dean. We just have to stay in control."

"Yeah, till it decides it's easier to just drop me and take you. Dude the only way we're going to get out of this, is if we fight."

Sam finally stopped forcing him to shuffle. "How though? We don't even know what it is we're fighting."

"I know something."

"What?"

Dean scowled "I don't know exactly."

"Huh? Please Dean, be less helpful."

"Damn it Sam, I'm trying!" Dean forced himself to stop, Sam's face was pissed but underneath there was panic, fear. He thought they were going to die. Hell they probably were, or at least Dean was, but he had to keep Sam calm, had to make him believe they'd win this.

"Every time it lets us go it's like...I dunno, like another piece is slotting into place."

"Telling you what?"

"Like I said, I don't know yet." He paused, daring to glance off to see how closely they were being watched. "I think we have to let it take us again."

"Are you crazy? What if we can't get free?"

"We will. Just trust me on this one Sammy."

As he turned away from Sam, he prayed he was right.

Xxx

"Sam, get up. We have to move. Now."

Sam groaned as Dean hauled him to his feet. He tried not to notice the blood flowing sluggishly from the fresh gash on his baby brother's temple. Or the glazed, dull look in his eyes. He wished he could give him time to recover, for the world to stop spinning like he knew it was, but there was no time, time was precious here and they had none to spare.

He tried not to dwell on the fact that he'd barely registered alarm at coming to and seeing Sam lying dazed on the ground. Figured that a head injury was inevitable the way they were being flung around like rag dolls, and that it didn't really matter because Sam couldn't die here.

It was that that unsettled him most, the feeling of complacency. Don't think about it, no time to think about it. They had to move.

"Dean, 'm gonna hurl."

"Not yet Sammy, we gotta keep moving."

"Just stop...just need two minutes...please."

"We don't have two minutes Sam. We have to get as far as we can, before it comes back."

"Why?"

"Dammit Sam! Why can't you ever just trust me. We just have to stall it."

"Him."

"What?" Dean froze, releasing his hold on Sam's jacket, causing his brother to stumble on his unsteady feet.

"What do you mean 'him'?"

"Huh? I didn't...Why does it matter?" Sam squeezed his eyes shut, pressing a hand to his head and inspecting the blood that it came away with.

Then suddenly Dean was aiming his gun at his brother. Funny, he didn't remember pulling it out, didn't even know that he still had it. But there is was, wobbling unsteadily in his hand while Sam stared at him, bewildered and panicked.

Dean blinked and lowered his gun. How had that happened?

"Dean, what..."

"I don't know. Quick, let's move."

He grabbed Sam's arm and after a moment's hesitation, Sam allowed his brother to drag him along through the woods.

Eugh, he really was going to throw up. The world was at a dodgy angle and spinning way too fast. He just needed two minutes to regroup. And what the hell had just happened? Dean had pulled a gun on him, his own brother? And had he really corrected Dean about the freaking gender of the damn monster?

After a few minutes of stumbling along, the fog cleared a little and he realised two things. One, they hadn't heard, seen or felt anything following them in a while. Two, they were running the wrong way. It hadn't let them go this time, just slipped beneath the surface, subtly controlling them like puppets on a string.

As he opened his mouth to tell Dean, a glint of light caught his eye through a gap in the trees. He heard Dean grunt as they were flung to the ground again.

He lay there panting, listening to the silence, the sound of Dean's laboured breathing, the absence of the birds and the whistling of the wind through the trees. The way it rustled the leaves and pushed snow off the branches to thud onto the earth. The wind picked up, shifting the snow around him, biting at the sensitive skin on his face. He sensed Dean rise uneasily to his feet, and stare into the distance. The wind grew stronger, pulling at him, pushing him, driving snow and water into his eyes. He pushed himself up next to his brother, and followed Dean's determined gaze.

It was snowing again, thick and heavy. He squinted through the wind and the snow and on the other side of the blizzard, he could see it standing there, watching them. A hazy, powerful figure, black against the white. He blinked away water from his stinging eyes. The wind whipped around them, through the trees.

"What do we do Dean?" Sam raised his voice above the din.

"Just hold on a little long..." They both jumped back as a tree limb crashed to the ground in front of them. Then they heard something else, out of place, in the distance, getting closer.

"What is that?" Dean turned his head to glance into the shadows behind them and abruptly threw himself at Sam, knocking them both forwards off their feet as a resounding boom shook the ground.

"The trees are falling Sam! Move!" Dean shoved Sam upwards, forcing him to run. They had no choice, it was toying with them, getting them where it wanted them and there was nothing they could do but run straight towards it, to avoid ending up like pancakes. Another crash sounded behind them, too close, Sam judged from the branches scraping down his back. They ran through the wind and the snow, towards the figure in the distance, it didn't get any closer, only forced them onwards.

Until, without warning, everything stopped. The wind died down to a bitter breeze, the snowfall grew softer and the trees stopped trying to flatten them. Sam dared a glance behind, it had been close. About fifteen enormous trees had fallen to the ground. One wrong foot and they'd have been crushed. Like the skeleton and few feet behind them. Sam's eyes darted around. Bodies. All around them, they were right back at the pathway of the dead, where he couldn't stop his imagination from picturing them crawling towards him. Only this time was it his imagination or did that corpse just move? Bony fingers reaching for his ankle.

_Imagination._

His stupid, big brain was just inventing more things for him to worry about. Like the way that corpse was propped against a tree trunk, when he was sure that just a few moments ago it had been sprawled at his feet.

_Imagination._

It was just his overactive imagination that was inventing the rustling sounds, it wasn't actually the sound of bodies rising from their frozen graves. And it was just the stress of the situation that made his mind picture them moving, crawling.

_Imagination Imagination Imagination._

But then Dean was stiffening, placing himself in front of Sam. Ushering Sam backwards.

_Imagination?_

Sam finally decided this might actually be happening when Dean backed him right into a fallen tree and he toppled over it, wincing as his back made contact with the compact snow, legs stuck comically in the air, followed by the hefty weight of his brother following suit, landing on his chest and knocking the wind out of him.

Sam decided this definitely was happening when Dean let out a high pitched "Shit!" and started squirming and kicking.

Sam tried unsuccessfully to wriggle out from the thrashing force of his brother and the elbows that were digging mercilessly into his ribs.

"Get off you... Sam it's got my freaking ankle." Dean was still squirming and Sam was still stuck, unable to see much of anything from his vantage point of the back of Dean's head.

He craned his neck just enough to see Dean draw back his other foot and bring it down, hard. There was a strange, sickening sound like the crunch of slightly soggy cereal and Dean tumbled, somersaulting backwards off Sam and scampering to his feet.

Dean was moving faster than Sam's mind was processing the information and his brother had already hauled him away by the time he'd even registered the gentle tugging on his jeans from the other side of the tree trunk.

He lifted the hem of Dean's shirt. The wound was still there, ugly, threatening, deadly. Yet Dean was jumping around like he was going for Gold in the Olympics. What was going to happen when they defeated this thing that was _keeping Dean alive? If if if, _his oh so helpful subconscious provided.

Dean yanked his shirt back down and pulled Sam to his feet, giving him only a split second to witness the grotesque display ahead that was struggling to stand, before he was forcing him over another fallen tree, away from the dead. That strange noise was back, only this time it wasn't so far away, this time it was close, just beyond the line of trees and getting closer.

Dean had stopped and was looking around frantically as the sound grew closer, the sound of footsteps and then they stepped out of the trees in front of them, behind them, all around them.

"Dean..."

"I know, I know."

"Dude what the hell do we do?"

They were advancing, albeit very slowly, dragging long dead limbs towards them. Hollow, expressionless faces, arms reaching out, clawing. Too many to count, like something out of a zombie movie. Sam supposed that's what they were, zombies, sort of. And as he stood back to back with Dean, eyes scanning for an escape route through the approaching mass of decay, he could see it there. Standing in the distance, watching them. Is this what happened to all its victims? When it got bored of playing it just used the bodies of those it had already taken?

"_Saaaaaaaaammyyyyyyyyyy."_ Oh and if that wasn't just too damn creepy. Hearing those dead mouths call his name without moving.

"_Deeeeeeeeeaaaaaan."_ He heard Dean mumble something behind him. He daren't look around, can't bring himself to tear his eyes away from the things that are advancing towards them. The things that were once human, now void of any emotion, any presence of mind, just dead. _Not quite though, _and once again his oversized brain was right. Because the bodies might be dead but their souls were trapped, trapped in that..._thing._ It had them all and was violating them even more by using them as its puppets.

They lumbered closer, well most of them did, the ones that had decomposed until only bones were left seemed to be having a hard time doing anything but scattering on the ground without muscle and ligaments to hold them together. A small part of Sam thought it was ever so slightly funny the way that a solitary bony hand was clawing its way towards him. Funny and downright disturbing. He found himself clenching his own hand, wondering if one day, years from now, another person would be standing right where he was, watching Sam's skeletal hand groping for them. He really really hoped not.

There were more than he'd thought, they'd been lying in the trees, they'd probably died crawling towards what they hoped was safety.

At least they seemed to have a problem with coordination, fallen trees were proving to be an issue, the closest ones walked straight into them and immediately hit the ground face down. One wobbly head fell at the wrong angle and rolled sickeningly away. Not quite as sickening as the way the rest of the body got up and kept on coming mind.

Sam had been watching it all with a kind of alarmed detachment, like he was the player in a video game and when they got him (which they definitely would), he'd just start back at an earlier stage, probably on the edge of the cliff, pulling Dean back onto solid ground.

But of course this wasn't a game, this was horrifyingly real and the severed hand that he'd been watching definitely had hold of his foot and was crawling up his jeans. He snapped back into himself, snatched the hand off his leg and hurled it at the head of a corpse, grimacing as a chunk of nose came away with it.

"Dean what do we do?"

He heard Dean grunt and another crunching sound as his brother apparently resorted to violence.

"I don't know, I don't know...sun...Sammy come on."

Before he knew it, Dean had grabbed him and they were hurtling past-no wait-through bodies, Dean had at some point acquired a hefty looking tree branch and was brandishing it in front of him like a sword, sending heads, limbs and torsos crumbling into dust. Typical Dean, he was probably in his element. Sam let himself be dragged through the trees, not noticing the twigs snagging in his hair or the thorns biting into his skin.

They were roughly twenty feet from the (what Sam now thought of as) zombies, when Dean stopped abruptly and spun to face his brother.

"We just have to hold off until the sun comes up. I remember now Sammy. He only has until dawn."

"How do you...?"

"Just trust me ok? Now run."

Sam ran. Dean had given him an order and he was running. Feet flying over uneven ground with energy he didn't know he still had. He let fear take over and he was sprinting through the trees, going faster than the nagging in his head could keep up with. Thinking off nothing but _runrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrun_. Almost too fast for the thoughts to seep in, but they did, quietly and discreetly, like they'd never even left. How did Dean know it only had until sunrise? How would they get out of here? What would happen to Dean when they weren't in its world anymore? Why was he alone?

Sam staggered to a halt, feet moving too fast to allow for a graceful standstill. He whipped around.

"DEAN!"

The woods were silent again. No falling trees, no names whispered on dead lips, no footsteps thundering after his own, no answer.

Sam's feet were propelling him forwards once again, before he'd even told them too. Back the way he'd come, always back to that same place.

"DEAN! ANSWER ME!"

Maybe he'd fallen, hit his head? Maybe the thing wasn't keeping him alive anymore? Maybe the zombies had got him? Or maybe Dean was just being the same stubborn jackass he always was.

Because there, up ahead, disappearing up a slope was the retreating form of his big brother. Not concussed, not being dragged, not in a trance, he was running, running away from Sam, back towards the precipice.

"DEAN!" Dean was fast, but Sam was faster, and he wasn't about to let his moron of a brother do what he knew he was about to do.

Sam's lungs screamed at him as he forced his legs to move faster than he thought possible. Nausea rose dangerously in his throat, but he pushed it back down, not thinking about how every breath froze his insides. Just concentrating on going faster, how if he couldn't make his ridiculous body move faster than it was capable that he'd never forgive himself. He was vaguely aware of Dean's footprints in the snow in front of him, but he didn't need them, he knew where he was going.

Even as he broke clear of the trees and felt the wind bite into his skin once more, he didn't stop running. His mind was moving faster than his body, there was Dean, just a few feet in front of him, still running, hurtling himself forward, and ahead, right on the edge, a tall dark figure, beckoning them closer. Sam couldn't focus on the face, but he knew it was grinning. Knew it just as sure as he knew that dawn wasn't too far away, or that he'd never reach Dean in time.

Dean never broke stride, never faltered, just glanced back over his shoulder once, his eyes finding Sam's instantly.

"_It always snows here Sammy."_ Dean's voice, but it hadn't come from Dean's mouth.

Sam was so close, his entire being was screaming at him to just STOP, just make everything stop! He never took his eyes from Dean's, even as he was throwing himself through the air, reaching out with desperate hands; he never took his eyes from Dean's.

Until Dean's eyes disappeared and as Sam's hands closed on what should have been Dean's wrist, they grasped only air.

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A.N. The next chapter is well under way and I aim to have this story finished off soon. All reviews are loved and provide much needed fuel. Thanks for reading.


	8. Chapter 8

Very nearly at the end now, one more chapter after this one and it'll be finished. I hope it's enjoyable. Reviews feed the monster. Enjoy.

* * *

Sam crashed onto his belly, for a moment he just lay there, not daring to move, because if he moved then it would be real. If he moved then he had been too slow to save his brother. So he just lay there, nose pressed against the snow.

There was no one there but him now. No voice on the wind, no figure standing on the edge, no self-sacrificing big brother there to keep him safe.

He couldn't leave Dean here though, maybe if he took his body then his soul wouldn't be at the mercy of the thing that had killed him. In truth, Sam wanted nothing more than to find Dean and just lie down and go to sleep next to him. But Sam couldn't be that selfish, not when Dean had died so that he might have a chance of getting away.

He heard something then, something soft, rising up from the chasm below him. He held his breath, afraid that if he made a noise he would frighten it away. After what seemed like an eternity, he heard it again, faint but unmistakable. A groan.

He scuttled forward and peeped over the edge, bracing himself for the sight of his brother splattered on the ground. Just looking down and knowing that Dean had fallen off that cliff made Sam's stomach flip, and there he was, lying at the very bottom, leg twisted at an awkward angle, arm moving slowly to his head, groaning, living! Dean was alive, he'd survived the fall. _For now._ Sam seriously wished the voice in his head would just shut up.

"Dean!" He yelled down, "Don't move, I'm coming, just stay still." He scanned for a way down, wanting to get there as fast as possible, but of course there was no way down, not unless he felt like flying himself.

"Dammit." He muttered, "Dean, just...please hang on."

Dean gave no sign that he'd heard, just continued that muffled groaning. Sam would have to go back the way he came, which would mean leaving Dean alone. There was nothing he could do from up here though, nothing but watch. He glanced nervously over his shoulder, feeling that all too familiar prickle on the back of his neck that warned him that there was something behind him.

Nothing. Nothing that he could see anyway. A sharp cry snapped his attention back to Dean. His brother was definitely awake now. Sat hunched over, his hands were hovering over his leg; Sam couldn't see his face but guessed his expression wasn't a happy one.

Sam shivered as a gust of wind slid itself under his shirt and stirred the snow around him, causing the thinning flakes of snow falling softly from the sky to whirl themselves into a frenzy and the leaves on the trees to rustle before fading out through the branches.

Sam was about to tear himself away and run down there as fast as humanly possible, but that meant forcing himself even further into the realms of helplessness, where he couldn't even see if his brother was alive or not. When he saw Dean stiffen, his whole being focused on one point.

Sam knew without seeing that it was there, advancing on his defenceless brother. Dean had started dragging himself backwards using his arms and one working leg, the other trailed uselessly after him.

Sam should run, or hell even jump, he should be doing something instead of just watching. Waiting for it to play out. But he couldn't, all he could do was watch. Watch as his brother slowly dragged his broken body backwards. It was futile, they both knew it. When Dean had thrown himself off the cliff, he'd known exactly what he was doing. But still, that self-preservation, that terrible fear, was too overwhelming to just let him stay still while it came for him.

From Sam's frustrating vantage point, he could see the shadows in the trees get deeper and take form. Then, once again, they came. The dead, shuffling out of the trees, coming one last time for his brother.

They staggered forward on decayed limbs, the only sound the crunching of dead feet on dead leaves. Dean would soon be one of them; he'd thrown himself into their grave to join them and now they were coming to claim him.

A clump of snow that was teetering on the edge of the cliff gave way under Sam's hand and went tumbling down to land with a thud. Dean jerked his head up towards Sam, and when he did, dozens more heads followed suit. Their necks twisted slowly, jerkily, and countless sets of hollow eyes focused on Sam. They looked right into him, through him, those empty eyes were predatory...hungry. They held the promise that he was next, once they were through with his brother they'd come for him.

"Hey!" Dean's shout from below drew their attention back to him, distracting them in the hope that Sam could escape. The shout snapped Sam back to his senses, thawing him from his frozen position. Without thinking he hurled himself to his feet and started running back down the path to his brother.

The ground was uneven under his feet and more than once he stumbled to his knees when he slipped on the slush that had been churned up by their frantic footsteps. At one point he skidded too hard and felt his jeans tear at the knee, he ignored the stinging flesh and smears of blood in the snow from where he pushed himself up and kept on going. He had no idea what he would do once he reached his brother, but he had to do something.

He was being watched again, he could feel it. It was in the spindly branches that snagged in his hair, in the haunting caw of the crow that watched as he passed. Nothing was stopping him though, there were no obstacles blocking his path, no spectral figure looming up out of the dim. Everything seemed to be falling into place. And that thought terrified him.

Finally, there he was, up ahead in the pre-dawn light. Dean Winchester, still alive, still kicking. Well maybe not kicking, but he had dragged himself to his feet and was using what looked to Sam suspiciously like a femur to do some serious damage. Rotted heads and other body parts were flying in all directions as Dean swung the bone back and forth, with no battle plan other than to take as many out as he could.

Sam was nearly upon him, fist already drawn back to eliminate the threat that had snuck up behind his brother, it had no arms and its head was making a nauseating rustling sound as it slid away from the neck bit by bit, but it probably still had teeth.

He was so close, mere feet between them when suddenly all he could see was a set of eyes. Cold, hypnotic, terrifying eyes. The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back, he couldn't focus, there was a lot of noise happening somewhere close by, but his eyes were so heavy, his body felt like lead. He struggled to lift his head, to move. He only realised his eyes were open when he blinked as a snowflake landed in one.

He was beginning to come back to himself, to remember what was happening, when he felt a hand on his forehead. It was soothing and he leaned into it. Dean. Dean would look after him now. Wouldn't he? No, Dean was hurt, he had to look after Dean. He opened his mouth to say something and then immediately forgot what it was when the hand on his forehead jerked his head back violently and another held his mouth open. He struggled, digging his stumpy nails into the hands that held him. Then he felt something worming its way down his throat, thick liquid that blocked his airway and choked him. He couldn't stop it, he couldn't breathe, little by little it slipped inside him, his lungs were burning, his head screaming, all he could hear was a high pitched ringing in his ears as the need for oxygen grew greater and greater. He tried not to swallow, but it was unrelenting and the more desperate he got, the more he panicked and choked.

Then suddenly a force seemed to blow in, powerful and furious. The pressure was gone, the hands vanished and he was hurled to the side while his attacker was snatched away. He tried to breathe but all he could do was gag and wretch. It was stuck in his throat, blocking his airway. It took him a minute to realise that the hands were back, pulling him to all fours, muttering in his ear.

"Come on Sammy, cough it up. Don't swallow it, cough it up."

Dean? He tried to do as he was told, to spit out the foulness, but his throat convulsed and purple spots danced before his eyes. It either had to go down or up or he would die, he had to breathe, he had to swallow it. But before he'd had time to register his decision, fingers were forcing themselves mercilessly into his mouth and down his throat. He swatted at the offending hand, but it was relentless, determined. The fingers jabbed cruelly at the back of his throat and suddenly he was wretching, spewing up the liquid that burned even more on the way back up. The hand snatched itself out of the way just in time and Sam was throwing up like it was New Years Day after his first taste of Jaeger bombs. Finally it was over and he was reduced to spitting up bile. He sucked in beautiful, delicious air and rolled onto his side, carefully avoiding the disgusting mess he'd made, he just needed one minute to breathe.

Dean apparently had other ideas. He pulled Sam into a sitting position and scrutinised his face, peering intently into his eyes.

"Sam? Is that you in there?"

"I think so. What the hell was that?"

"I don't know. You didn't swallow any though did you?"

"No." Sam was struggling to form anything more than monosyllables.

"Good. I think that's what I was roofied with earlier."

"What happ...Did you..?"

"Body slammed it. Whatever it was, too much snow, couldn't see properly. One minute I'm Ash in the Evil Dead, the next, there's this...shape on top of you. Took me a minute to get rid of the fan club or I would have been faster."

"S'okay. No, wait, it's not ok! You jumped off a damn cliff! Now you're talking like nothing happened. Your stupid leg is broken and you're walking on it. None of this is ok!"

"Don't call my leg stupid."

Sam was feeling better, more than that, he was feeling pissed. Dean was ok, and that meant he could be angry that he'd done something so damn moronic.

"What the hell were you thinking?!"

"I was thinking I could buy you some time. It would have worked if you hadn't been so damn stubborn, now we both get to die."

"Great, because life would have been fantastic knowing that you were a walking corpse. 'Hey Sam, what happened to your brother?' 'Oh he jumped off a cliff to save me, because he's an IDIOT! But his reanimated shell stops by for a freaking beer from time to time.' Your leg looks like shit by the way." Sam shoved his brother in his broken leg.

"OW!" Dean blanched in pain and shoved Sam right back "That hurt you ass."

"Well you can walk on it Dean, so it can't hurt that bad."

"Dammit Sam, what do you want me to do huh?"

"I want you to give a crap Dean! Don't you care that you just tried to kill yourself."

"Please, I did not try to kill myself, just...do my job."

"Sacrificing yourself for me is not your job Dean."

"Sam..."

"No, fighting evil is your job; not DYING is your job."

"Sam..."

"How do you think I'd have felt knowing that you'd died to save me? Again!"

"SAM!"

"WHAT?"

"We've got company."

Sam gingerly looked back over his shoulder, the bodies were back, slowly forming a circle around them, Dean had done a good job of taking them apart, but it also meant that he'd created more body parts to fight.

"What do we do Dean?"

"I don't know."

They lunged then; the circle they had formed broke as body after body hurled itself at the brothers. Sam was knocked onto his back as bony fingers pinned his arm to the ground. He brought up his leg to knee it away and snapped off fingers with his free hand. He lost sight of Dean, rolling onto his knees he caught sight of his brother's boots disappearing in the tree line.

"_SAM! Sam where are you?!"_

"DEAN! Dean I'm here!" He sent fists flying into the crunchy bone, let skulls crumble to dust and dragged himself to his feet.

"_SAMMY! SAMMY ANSWER ME!"_

He left behind the empty husks and plunged towards the trees.

"_SAAAAAAAM!"_

"Sam?"

He froze, made himself turn back around. Dean was there, right where he'd left him, surrounded living corpses. They weren't touching him, just watching, waiting.

"Dean? You were...You shouted for me."

"_Deeeeeeeeaaaaaan."_

Dean smiled sadly, "That wasn't me Sam."

Sam realised too late, it had tricked him, separated them.

"_Deeeeeeeeaaaaaaan." _

"It's ok Sam."

It appeared so swiftly that Sam wondered if it had been there all along, standing behind his brother, dark and powerful, if maybe he just hadn't seen it for the snow.

_It always snows here._

He was terrified; the thing was looming over his brother. Snow began to cascade down over Dean, blanketing him in white powder. He couldn't move, he knew that as soon as he did it would descend and Dean would be gone forever. The snow was coming down faster and thicker, it blew outwards, Sam blinked it out of his eyes and watched in horror as the flakes fell upon the army of the dead and breathed their souls back into their bodies.

The eyes were the only place he could see it, could be sure. They gaped in horror at what they'd become and then began to scream.

One by one they screamed, horrifying, tortured wails of despair and agony. Sam had never heard anything like it. The sound rose to a crescendo, he pushed his hands to his ears and through the snow he saw Dean do the same. He watched Dean fall to his knees, and wanted to copy him. He wanted so badly to curl up and close his eyes, to blot out all sight and sound.

But he couldn't tear his eyes away, they were howling in pain and misery, no words, just a primal, guttural scream. They knew what they were, they'd been turned into soldiers for the thing that had taken their lives and they were doomed to live on, feeling the pain of their rotting bodies, adding more and more to their numbers. For the first time in hours, Sam pitied them, it wasn't strong enough to overwhelm his own mortal terror, but it was there.

He focused on one that he recognised, the one that had seemed the freshest to him when he'd first stumbled upon them all those hours ago. It seemed like days. The horror on his face was so raw, so...alive. Sam watched in morbid fascination as he inspected his violently shaking hands, the chunk missing from his arm that appeared to have been gnawed away. Then he looked right at Sam, he knew that he was screaming for help, but all he could form was a torturous wail.

Sam wrenched his eyes away, focusing instead on Dean, who was crouched on his knees on the ground, eyes tightly shut and hands clamped over his ears. They started to move back down the path, still screaming that terrible scream. Sam could only stand and stare as they started to lie down, reforming the passageway that he'd first found them in. It was only once they were all down that he saw it, Dean was last in line, a place was saved for him next to the young guy who had strayed too far and found himself being used as a puppet. This was how it was supposed to happen, he realised. It was always meant to end this way.

As the snow continued its relentless fall, one of the dead, a half decayed woman, with part of her skull missing and both legs shattered below the knee, dragged herself towards Dean. Sam looked on, waiting for her to suck the life from his brother, but instead she drew his hands away from his ears, Dean opened his eyes and looked at her, his expression was unreadable, but he didn't resist when the woman simply took his hand in her own rotten one. She wasn't screaming anymore, she lay her decomposing body down onto the ground, still clutching Dean's hand in her own. Then Dean lay down as well.

There was no fight, no struggle, Dean just eased his body down onto the white earth and closed his eyes. The shadow behind him seemed to...loom. It was the only way Sam could describe it, the snow whipped up into a flurry, obscuring the scene. Sam watched as the creature swooped low over his brother, dark and fearsome. Sam didn't move, he didn't feel the need to move. It was inevitable, there was nothing he could do and he accepted that. It would be his turn soon; he didn't know where his spot would be, maybe next to Dean, maybe across from him. Dean had accepted it, and so had he.

The dark shape seemed to grow larger, but was hard to tell, just like it was hard to tell if Dean's body really had begun to tremble violently, or if it was just the snow distorting things, like an old film that doesn't fit into the new world any more. Sam cocked his head to the side, he wondered how it was killing him, what was it doing to absorb his soul. He hoped it didn't hurt too much.

He wanted it hurry the hell up, he wanted it to be over. Or did he want to it begin? He wasn't sure.

"_Sam."_

Sam blinked, had it called his name again?

"_Sam, help him."_

Something had said his name, something that didn't quite have a voice.

"_Save him Sam, do it now."_

Sam gasped, he hadn't realised he'd been holding his breath; his head was dizzy with the need for oxygen. It had been controlling him, keeping him at bay while it took his brother. Dean, Dean was dying.

Sam threw himself forward, "DEAN! LET HIM GO YOU BASTARD!"

He plunged through the swirling snow, drew his gun and fired. The sound was deafening as it echoed through the woods. He hadn't really expected that a bullet would do any damage, it was fired out of anger and instinct, but it created a distraction. The creature snarled, and rounded on Sam so fast that afterwards he wasn't sure that he'd seen anything at all. Just a memory of a face, a flash of rage and death and fear that would forever be etched into his nightmares, never staying long enough to be seen properly. Then it was gone, back into the trees. The bodies on the ground were still shaking, just like Dean who was juddering and shaking violently. It would be back, Sam wasn't naive enough to believe that he'd killed it. But for the first time, he had the feeling that maybe they weren't fighting it alone.

The snow had slowed once again to a steady fall. He wasn't even thinking of the cold, of how they could escape. All he could think about as he crashed to his knees beside his trembling brother, was that he'd bought them a little more time.

"Dean." He reached out and gentle disentangled his brother's hand from the woman's corpse. Without wasting any time, he pulled Dean away from the bodies, just far enough that he didn't look like he belonged there.

Every part of Dean was still twitching, his legs bouncing softly against the compact snow.

Sam's hands hovered above him, not knowing how to fix it.

"Dean. Wake up man, please."

He shook his shoulders gently and as soon as he did, Dean woke up swinging. Sam barely managed to dodge the fist. Dean's eyes were open and terrified, he was gasping in great lungfulls of air, writhing in Sam's grasp.

"Dean! Knock it off, it's me! It's Sam, you're ok!"

Dean blinked and focused on Sam. His eyes still bright with fear but he was calming down.

"Sam?"

"Yeah. You ok?"

"We're not dead?"

"Not yet."

Dean gave a visible sigh of relief.

"Dean...what just happened?"

Dean's eyes darkened "New plan Sam, let's die anywhere but here."

"Deal."

He'd barely finished speaking when the ground began to rumble under them. The bodies, that had fallen silent, began to scream again, and from far down past the rows of deceased, a darkness rushed forward.

Sam pushed himself to his feet and hauled Dean up after him.

"We have to move."

"There's nowhere to move to Sam. He's coming."

"We have to do something Dean, we have to..." He broke off and stared into the trees, there was a figure, standing there, watching them. Dean was shouting in his face, pulling on his arm and the dark thing was getting closer and closer, it was furious, and the figure in the shadows raised his head to the tree tops and then gently dropped it back down to the ground.

Sam squinted in confusion then looked upwards, wondering if there was something there he'd missed, the snow was still coming and the tree tops obscured most of the sky, but there was something else, something Dean said.

"_We just have to hold off until the sun comes up. I remember now Sammy. He only has until dawn."_

Dawn. The sun was coming. But so was the monster, hurtling towards them so fast that Sam didn't have any more time to think. Without warning he grabbed Dean and forced him to run, he didn't think a broken leg took precedent at this particular moment in time, not that it seemed to be much of an issue anyway. He kept Dean in front of him, pushed him forwards, refusing to look back at the creature that was gaining on them. Ignoring the bodies that screamed and reached out for them. He kept running until he could feel icy breath on the back of his neck, and then he kept running. Because they were so close, so very nearly there, they just had to make it this one last time.

He could almost see it now, up ahead, it was now or never. He fisted his hands in the sodden fabric on Dean's shoulders and threw them both forward onto the ground. Dean grunted in surprise, but Sam clung on, covered their heads with his arms and held on.

He felt the thing come up right on top of them, and just prayed that Dean was right. It was looming above them now, he could tell, he could smell it. Just as he was sure that he'd got it wrong, that the monster would consume them, the darkness behind his squeezed closed eyes seemed to get a little brighter. Dawn.

"Sam..." Dean's muffled voice came from underneath him.

"Just hang on."

Sam felt the presence behind them back away slightly; he could almost see it sniffing the air. Then it growled a long low growl of fury. The ground began to rumble again, wind whipped around them, so cold it seemed to tear right through them, the snow bit at their exposed skin and Sam hung on to his brother for dear life. The monster was still growling and far off they could hear the people screaming. What sounded like trees crashed to the ground around them, but Sam daren't look, fearful that if he did, if either of them dared to peep, it'd snatch them away with it.

"SAM!?" Dean's voice was panicked, frightened that Sam had been stolen away and a corpse had been left in his place.

"DON'T LOOK DEAN!" Sam raised his voice above the din. He was desperate to cover his ears but kept his hands firmly pressed down over their heads. It was still growling, it was furious, but it was retreating, he was sure of it. If they could just hold on a little longer then it'd be gone and they'd be...Sam's thoughts were interrupted as he felt an incredible force close around his calf, before it yanked him backwards. He let out an oof of surprise as he scrambled for purchase on the icy ground, but all his hands could close on was the denim clad leg of his brother.

It had him, it might be retreating but it was taking him with it, and there was no way that Sam would drag Dean along too. He let go.

He vaguely registered Dean's alarmed shouting as his hands slid down his leg, past his boots and onto the snow.

_Get out Dean_, he thought_ Get out and live._ But he couldn't say it, he wanted to be brave and stoic but God he was so afraid and he knew that if he opened his mouth that the sound of the fear in his voice would cause Dean to do something stupid like take his place. So he didn't say anything. Just thought it and hoped that he knew.

He opened his eyes when he felt an equally powerful force clamp down on his wrist, expecting see his own demise looming, he was actually quite surprised to see Dean, stretched out on his stomach, hanging onto Sam for all that he was worth.

"Dean what are you doing? Let go, you don't need to die too."

"Shut up, you idiot." Dean ground out, his jaw clenched, face set in steely determination, his entire body trembling with the exertion of holding onto Sam. His other arm was wrapped around a thin tree trunk, but he was slipping, losing his grip on the tree to keep from losing his grip on Sam.

Sam felt a yank on his leg and started to glance back over his shoulder before Dean's shout stopped him.

"No! Don't you look at him. Just focus on me Sam, just stay with me."

Sam nodded mutely and clung to Dean's arm, fighting the force pulling at him. It was rapidly becoming more insistent as the sun shone brighter and the woods crashed down around them until finally, with one last ferocious growl, the grip on Sam's calf released and the roar disappeared on the wind.

Xxx

For what seemed like the longest time they lay there, clinging to each other, not daring to let go. The incredible noise had been replaced by an almost eerie silence that seemed to suffocate them. Eventually, a bird twittered somewhere in the trees and normal sound seemed to return to the world. The sun was still rising lazily, chasing away the worst of the shadows and the snow had dwindled to the rare flake fluttering down.

Sam finally dared a glance over his shoulder. There was nothing there. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

"Is it over?"

Dean relaxed the iron grip on his wrist "I think so."

Tentatively they clambered to their feet, Dean inspecting Sam for any obvious signs of injury.

"How did you know that would work?"

"Something you said, about the dawn. Still don't get how you knew that."

"Dunno, I guess I was just in its head for a while. I've never come across anything like this Sam."

"You're telling me. Well I don't know about you, but I'm thinking we can mull this over after we get out of these damn woods."

"Sounds like a plan. Um, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Which way to the car?"

"Let's try following our footsteps and take it from there."

"Yeah cause I wasn't tramping all the hell over this damn place."

"Come on."

They plodded back the way they'd come, for the last time ever, they hoped. They paused when they arrived at the dead bodies.

"What do we do with them?"

"Nothing we can do Sam. Don't think burning them will do anything. We'll ask Bobby when we get back, see if he knows anything."

Dean glanced at the groove in the snow, the spot that would have been his if not for Sam. The woman was silent now, but her hand still reached out, as if searching for him. Dean shuddered.

"She held your hand."

"Uh huh."

"Why?"

Dean stared at her for a while. "Comfort I guess. They were all still human in some way Sam. He just...controlled them."

"Let's get out of here. Like you say, Bobby might know something that can free them."

Dean didn't say anything, just walked forward, not looking at any of the others, Sam paused only briefly to look at the last man, he'd looked so scared at what he'd become. He pushed the thought aside and trudged after Dean.

Sam was beat, exhausted in a way that he hadn't felt in a long time. The adrenaline was finally wearing off, but at least they could see better, and the sun warmed things a little. They left the bone yard behind them without looking back. Dean didn't want to see it again, and if Sam was honest with himself, he was afraid that if he looked back, they'd be standing there, waving after them, so he just kept walking.

They hadn't gone far when a crunching noise behind them made them both spin around on guard. There was nothing there. Literally nothing, just the trees, where moments ago they had followed a well worn path, behind them now was just foliage, like wherever they had just been was now out of bounds. Dean looked at Sam silently and pressed on.

They'd made a little progress, but they were both exhausted and going slower and slower, Dean especially was starting to feel spectacularly crappy. His leg was complaining loudly and every fibre of his being was starting to protest at the constant movement. Without warning, the world tilted to the side and he had to steady himself against the closest object, unfortunately for him, that object was Sam.

"You ok man?"

"Yeah, just, think last night is catching up with me."

They walked on, but Dean got slower and slower, his leg was really protesting too much and he was seriously out of breath. The world hadn't stood still for some time now and puking up everything he had ever eaten ever, seemed like quite a good plan. He just had to get to the car though, once they did, Sam could take over and he could even take him to a hospital if he'd like. Dean wouldn't complain much at all, in fact it might be quite nice. Just when he thought it couldn't get much worse, fresh pain ripped across his abdomen. He gasped loudly and clutched his stomach. New pain, new, excruciating, bad pain.

He was trembling now, but there was no monster here, he remembered this from earlier. He was going back into shock. He should call out for Sam who was several feet ahead and had clearly not heard his cry. But he couldn't make his mouth work, he couldn't make himself do anything but press his hand tightly against his stomach and hold on.

"Dean?"

Oh thank God.

"Dean, what's wrong man."

Words. Now would be a very good time for words. But his voice was betraying him, leaving him mute and just a little bit petrified all on his own.

He couldn't stop shaking, all he could do was hold on, hold everything in. Sam was in his face, vibrant new concern shining on his tired face. Then his head was jerking down, Dean followed his gaze, down to his hands, to the fresh blood that was seeping through his fingers. Dean met Sam's frightened eyes before Sam gently pulled Dean's hands away. Dean raised up a bloody hand to inspect as Sam uttered a curse. The front of his shirt was dark and sticky with blood.

Dean's voice returned to him. "Sam..."

Then he crumpled to the ground.

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Thanks for reading, the next chapter will be up soon.


	9. Chapter 9

A.N. Here it is folks, the last chapter and epilogue are complete. I would like to offer my extreme thanks to anyone who has read and particularly reviewed this story. For those of you who have followed it from the start, I am genuinely sorry for the long pauses between updates. I hope that you enjoy the ending and check out my other stories if you're interested.

Also, if anyone is interested, check out the Beware the Judderman advert on youtube, it partly inspired this story and it's pretty cool.

* * *

"Dean?" Oh God Dean." Sam dropped to his knees next to his brother. He pulled the hem of his shirt up. The Yeti wound had reopened, it was bleeding sluggishly like the injury had only just happened. But the edges were raw, the skin pulled even further apart from all the acrobatics Dean had been up to. Not to mention all the infection he'd been exposed to.

"Shit." He should have seen this coming, Dean had barely been conscious before, not to mention the fact that he'd jumped off a freaking cliff.

"Dean? Dean, tell me what to do."

His abdominal wound was still bleeding steadily, but how much blood did Dean had left to lose? Had it been replenished or just paused while they were on their little adventure? He hauled Dean's torso upright and wriggled his arms out of the flannel shirt that he'd bundled him into earlier in an attempt to keep him warm. He didn't know what had happened to the bandages that he'd bound Dean in earlier, but he had to do something now to stem the flow of blood.

The shirt was soaking and no doubt filthy, but Sam had nothing else, everything he'd had, he'd lost along the way. He couldn't make his clumsy fingers tear at the material, so he just wrapped is as best as he could around the wound.

He slapped Dean's cheek softly; his skin was clammy to the touch, his face pale and gaunt.

"Dean, open your eyes man." When that didn't work, he slapped him hard, panicking, knowing it was stupid, but needing to do something. To his surprise, Dean groaned.

"Dean? Dean talk to me."

"S'going on?" His eyes were bleary with confusion, they flickered about their surroundings before settling on Sam's face before Dean craned his neck to look down at himself.

"Oh yeah. That. Shit." The trembling started anew, stupid shock giving them even more to worry about.

"It's ok, we should be able to make it back to the car now. That thing was keeping us lost before, we're back now...It'll be ok. Do you think you can walk?"

Dean nodded without speaking and Sam gently helped him into a sitting position. He stopped short when he noticed the blood stained snow in the spot Dean's head had been. He twisted around to get a better look; Dean had a decidedly nasty looking head wound. Where the hell had he got that?

The cliff. It all snapped into place at the same time as Dean gave wheeze of pain and started coughing up blood.

Sam couldn't speak, he couldn't move. He'd thrown himself off the cliff and Sam thought he'd escaped with a broken leg. But of course it wasn't that simple, Dean's earlier words echoed back to him.

"_We can't die here Sam. Nothing dies here."_

But they weren't there anymore, it wasn't keeping them alive and Dean had jumped off a cliff and his injuries were catching up with him.

"Sam." Dean's voice was strained and wheezy.

"Can't...breathe." He coughed and even more blood spattered onto the pristine snow.

Dean was dying. That wasn't fair. After all that they'd been through last night, it wasn't fair.

"Tell me where it hurts Dean."

"Everywhere...head...side." His hand was pressed to his right side, Sam could just about make out the bruises that were beginning to form.

"It'll be ok, we just have to get you to a hospital. The injuries seem to be happening one by one. We can make it."

"Can't..."

Sam didn't let him finished, as carefully as he could, he pulled Dean to his feet, careful not to aggravate anything further.

"Lean on me. Just walk."

They'd barely taken two painstakingly slow steps when Dean put pressure on his busted leg and let out an animal cry of pain.

Broken then. Very very broken. Fine.

"It's ok, I'll do most of the work. You just...hop."

"Shit Sam. Seriously, shit." Dean was panicking, phantom injuries were making themselves known all over his body. Sam thought he'd probably be panicking too in the circumstances. Hell, he was panicking, but one of them had to keep it together.

They staggered along, Sam practically carrying Dean on his hip.

"Sam...stop. Not gonna...hurts too much. I...won't...make it."

Without asking, Sam swung Dean up over his shoulder, leaving his right side free. He would get his brother out of here alive or die trying.

Xxx

The world was a blur of white and black, he wondered when it had started snowing again, it wasn't so creepy this time around. It was nice, gentle, it made him feel safe. But the black was creeping in more and more. Staying for longer each time, it seemed like every time he blinked, he lost time.

The only real constant was the pain and the sound of laboured breathing. Who it came from he couldn't be sure. The white was blinding him, the sun was reflecting off it, dazzling him. He closed his eyes, let the black was over him like a wave, comforting, unaware.

He opened his eyes again when he heard a grunt, then the world dipped, like a crappy roller coaster and he felt himself rolling, back onto the cold cold ground. Not that he could feel the cold too much anymore, come to think of it, he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt anything besides the pain. His toes had certainly lost contact with the mothership a long time ago.

He tried to groan but it turned into another wracking cough, it split him down the middle and left a metallic taste in his mouth.

He focused his bleary eyes on Sam, where he'd apparently stumbled; he was pushing himself to his feet. He looked like crap. And if Sam was looking that bad then he really didn't want to know what the hell he himself looked like.

Sam shuffled over and wordlessly tugged at him again.

"No." Huh, apparently his voice still worked, that was something considering that each breath felt like it was coming through a straw.

"Come on Dean, it can't be too much further."

"Please Sam...hurts." Fantastic, he'd resorted to whining.

"Dean I can't leave you here, I might not be able to find you again."

He was drifting again, Sam was becoming a fuzzy blur in front of him. He looked so tired. Dean was tired, breathing was too much effort and he just wanted to sleep.

"S'okay...doesn't hurt...mu..." The world faded away, only to be brought back with a stinging slap to the face. Hadn't they been here before?

"Dammit Dean, tonight has been too crappy for you to just quit."

"'m sry Sam. End...of the line."

Sam stubbornly ignored him and tried to sling him over his shoulder in a fireman's lift again.

"NO! Please...no carrying...can't breathe."

Sam stopped and looked at him, weighing his options, the snow landed in his hair, on his clothes, making him look uncannily like the abominable snowman. Hmm, that was too close to a Yeti, and that was how they'd ended up here in the first place. He moved his head away and left Sam to ponder their options. In Dean's opinion they were very low on options, but if it would make Sam feel better.

He watched the snow fall, it was thick and pure and wonderful. The great eraser, it would cover all signs of their earlier struggles, it would wipe the slate clean and make everything new. Fair enough it might turn him into a human popsicle too, but that was ok. It was ok because he wasn't cold any more, and it really didn't hurt too much now either. He let himself float.

He opened his eyes again when he felt movement. The world was sliding away, he should panic, warn Sam that the ground was moving, but his mouth was as fuzzy as his brain. So instead he tried to figure out why it was sliding, he started intently as the ground bumped under his legs, trees and bushes appeared into view before fading away into the distance. He stared at his legs while they bumped along, every jolt spiking dull pain through his leg. That must have been what woke him, the world sliding away. He hoped Sam was holding onto something solid. His leg really was bent at a weird angle. His jeans were sodden and his boots were probably ruined. Damn, he liked those boots. But why was the world sliding away. Then he noticed the sensation under his arms, he let his head loll left and then right. Two, equally paw like hands were gripping him. Sam, Sam was behind him. Oh. Sam was pulling him. He could hear his strained breathing. That boy was earning a gold star tonight.

"Smmm." Try again.

"Sam?"

"Yeah Dean?" Sam didn't stop.

"You'll be ok." And the world slid away one last time.

Xxx

Sam twisted himself round to look at his brother's face. He was ghostly pale apart from the dark circles under his sunken eyes and the flecks of blood that he'd coughed up.

"Dean? Oh God, Dean! Don't be dead. Please don't be dead."

He eased his brother onto the ground and pressed his fingers to his pulse. He couldn't feel anything. Of course, he hadn't been able to feel anything in his hands for a long time, his fingers were wrinkled and pruney and a sickening colour that promised frostbite might be paying him a visit very soon. He laid his ear to Dean's mouth and listened, not daring to move.

It was faint, but it was there, soft cold breaths on his cheek, accompanied by a painful wheezing sound. That was good enough for him. He couldn't afford to stop.

The snow was coming down hard again, it was a hell of a snowstorm they'd stumbled into. He wasn't sure how long he could hold on for. Every step was painful and the added burden of his deadweight brother wasn't helping. More than once he stumbled and struggled to get up again.

He groaned as he realised that he couldn't see anything, the snow was too thick, he had no idea where he was going or even if he was going in circles.

And then, mercifully, he found himself in a clearing. A big white field of clearing, and they'd been here before. The church! They found the church again. Maybe there was someone inside who could help, or maybe he could leave Dean there in the warm and go and get help. He'd have to go on foot, he had no idea what had happened to his cell phone, not that there'd been any signal anyway.

He hauled his precious cargo towards the building that loomed out of the snow. As he got closer he could see the carnage that had ripped through the churchyard all those hours ago. The headstones that had been torn away lay strewn on the ground, and the stone angels now faced off towards the trees, no longer able to stand vigil over the dead. If possible it looked even more deserted than it had last night, but softly, barely audible above the heavy silence that the snow brought with it and his own laboured breathing, he heard something.

At least he thought he did. Voices. Soft muffling that came from inside the old building. People. People with clothing and cell phones and directions and help.

He laid Dean flat on the snow, suddenly finding the weight just too heavy.

"I'll be right back Dean, I'm going to get help." All he had to do was drag himself across the clearing, through the destruction in the churchyard, open the heavy doors and scream at whoever was there to help him, then he could be back with Dean in a matter of seconds.

But it was so hard, walking shouldn't be this hard, but every time his feet sank down into the snow it felt like quicksand when he pulled it back out. But eventually he made it; he staggered through the gate that hung forlornly off its hinges and past the stone angels with their backs to him. He was certain he could hear voices now, they would help him.

He stumbled on his uncooperative feet and fell bodily against the church door, letting out an _oof_ of pain. Then, drawing on every ounce of energy he had left, he forced himself upright, gripped the metal doorknob and swung open the heavy door, his mouth already open to shout out to anyone and everyone inside.

"Sammy?"

His cry died on his lips.

"Sammy where are you?"

Dean was awake, Dean needed him. He stepped back and clicked the groaning door back into place. He started back towards his brother, he was lighter on his feet now, because Dean was awake and freaked and alone. He was actually moving pretty quickly, he could see the blur that was his brother up ahead, wriggling as he tried to move his broken body, he was searching for him.

"Dean, it's ok, I'm here." He slid to his knees in the snow, Dean's eyes were bright and feverish.

"Sammy? Thank God. Where were you?"

"Sorry, I went to the church to try and get help."

"Anyone there?" And help him there was just so much fear on his brother's face.

"No one. It was empty."

Dean an almost imperceptible nod, he looked so defeated, he couldn't even walk to save himself.

It was up to Sam, it was all up to Sam. Both their lives were flickering in his frozen hands.

Once more he fisted his hands in Dean's jacket. Dean was protesting, swatting clumsily at him, but he couldn't let go while he had any strength (or fingers) left.

He only registered bits of what Dean said, he just didn't have the energy for multitasking right now, and he just caught snippets of,

"Sam please-can bring back help-lost-Sam, you're bleeding." Huh, that one seemed to register, probably because a distant part of his brain had been nagging him about the fact that something wet was dripping into one eye. He released Dean and let him slump against his legs as he raised one hand to his temple. It came away red. Oh. Right. He'd hit his head earlier, bashed it pretty hard actually, it hadn't bled too much at the time, it had mainly looked red and angry. Now it seemed like every blood cell in his body had found its way to the exit.

Come to think of it, he was kind of dizzy too and he felt...

Without much warning he crashed to all fours and threw up. Bile spilled out onto the snow, he hadn't much left in his stomach after his little choking escapade earlier.

He closed his eyes and willed everything to just slow down, but the world spun behind his closed eyelids and threatened to spill him over into unconsciousness. He couldn't do that. Later, but not now, not when one life so desperately depended on him.

He could hear Dean's weak voice calling his name and he wanted to respond but he was afraid that if he made any movement he would teeter over the precipice and pass out. So he just concentrated on breathing, deep, nauseating breaths in and out until he dared to open his eyes.

The world was still at a wonky angle but it was staying still enough, so he got to his feet and grabbed hold of his brother, unable to answer any of the questions Dean was firing at him. Dean, who wasn't even holding onto his stomach anymore, whose skin was the same ghastly shade of pale as many corpses that Sam had seen in his time. Dean, who even now was just concerned about little Sammy.

He fell. He took one step back and his body refused to do any more. His head was throbbing and all he wanted to do was sleep it off, but sleeping it off in this weather would mean both of their deaths. He propped himself up on shaking arms, he tried to get his legs under him but they gave out and he careened forwards once more. He waited for the ground to rush up and meet him, but instead a pair of strong hands caught him before he hit.

Oh God, the monster. It had found them, it had let them think they'd escaped, that they had a chance, but all it had done was wait and now it would take what it wanted with ease.

But he wasn't being eaten and the hands were surprisingly gentle, and he was pretty sure the monster wouldn't be calling him son.

The scent of whiskey and motor oil stirred something in him and he cracked open his bleary eyes. He struggled to focus on the face in front of him, but it was familiar, he knew it, just like he knew that in normal circumstances, he'd be laughing at the sight of the bulky puffer jacket the wearer was bundled into.

Then, as his vision cleared it all came rushing back to him.

Bobby.

He was right there, solid and real, like a hairy angel sent to save them. Frantic concern was etched onto his features, Sam could see his lips moving but he couldn't hear anything over the repeated chorus of _Hallelujah_ that was going round and round in his head.

His hand reached out of its own accord then, he watched as it softly poked at the older man's face, his numb fingers picked up the prickle of whiskers and then poked a bit more, just to make sure that he wasn't hallucinating.

"Are you real?"

"...the hell have you two gotten yourselves into this time?" Ooh, sound was returning, that was good; the world seemed to have straightened itself out a bit too.

"Dammit Sam, what happened here?"

Sam just gaped, open mouthed and confused. "You're not going to kill yourself and then vanish are you?"

If it was possible, Bobby looked even more stricken.

"Pull yourself together boy!" Bobby sounded angry now, or maybe he was just scared, "What happened to your brother?"

Dean! Crap, Dean was still bleeding out all over the snow, he had to focus for just a little while longer. It took considerable effort, but he forced his mind back to full awareness.

"Bobby."

"That's right Sam, now if I let you go you won't fall will you?"

Sam shook his head and Bobby tentatively released his firm grip. He inspected Sam's face for signs that he was about to keel over before scurrying behind him to his brother.

For a minute Sam just knelt there in the snow, letting Bobby take charge while the world realigned itself. He could hear Bobby swearing and trying to rouse Dean, who in turn responded with a series of groans and rattling breaths.

When he finally felt like he could be of some use again, he turned around. Bobby was wriggling out of the enormous puffer jacket he was wearing and then tugging off Dean's own soaking layers before bundling the semi-conscious man into the coat.

"Sam, what happened?"

"Yeti...and he fell."

"Damn it! Dean, can you hear me son?"

"What are you doing here Bobby?"

"You sound like you're not pleased to see me."

"I am, it's just...how are you here?"

"You were supposed to check in three days ago kid. I've been looking for you."

"Three days? What are you talking about? We're supposed to check in with you this afternoon."

"Sam, you've been missing for days."

That made no sense, his watch told him that only hours had passed, and it was right, the sun had gone down last night, and it was only when it came back up that they escaped.

He came back to the present when Bobby gave a hiss at the sight of the Yeti wound.

"We need to get your brother to a hospital now. He's hurt bad Sam."

The tone in Bobby's voice wasn't comforting, it was scary. It didn't say that Dean would be alright when they got him to hospital, it said that Dean probably wouldn't make it to hospital. Sam watched dumbfounded as Bobby lifted Dean as best he could.

"Sam, I can carry him. Can you walk? Sam! Can you walk?"

Sam only nodded; words had escaped him again, because his brother was going to die.

Bobby paused when he reached the tree line and looked back to make sure Sam was following.

"Wait, did you check the church? We could use all the help we can get right now Sam."

"No. There was no one there to help us."

Bobby grunted and hefted Dean higher and set off again.

Sam glanced back at the grey church that loomed out of the snow. It was true, there was no one there that could help them. But it wasn't empty.

He'd swung open the door to reveal a silent building that was full of people. They sat in the pews with their heads bowed as if in prayer. Sam had watched as their heads lifted in unison and they turned towards him. Dozens of silent faces turned to him and Sam hadn't been able to speak as he'd seen their faces, each one was twisted in a voiceless scream. Apart from one man standing at the front of the church, his features were in shadow, but he raised a finger to his lips and their heads dropped slowly down again. And Sam had been able to see right through each one of them.

He'd closed the door and left them there, that place wasn't meant for him and they'd given them all the help they could.

Xxx

Sam decided that Dean looked kind of stupid in a puffer jacket. But he suspected that might be partly out of jealousy that Dean was wearing something warm and dry and didn't have to exert any energy at all, not like him and poor Bobby who was panting like a smoker.

Sam didn't know how long they'd been walking; apparently he couldn't trust his watch anymore.

But Dean's breathing was growing increasingly shallow and he hadn't made any indication that he was at all alert in a good long while.

Sam and Bobby had resorted to carrying him together, Sam had the legs and Bobby the arms, with the rest of Dean bouncing along between them and no doubt making all his injuries ten times worse.

Sam was positive that his brother was going to die, those shallow breaths had a rattle to them and all Sam could think was _deathrattledeathrattledeathr attle_.

And then suddenly, there it was. A new, foreign sound in this world. It was without a doubt the most beautiful sound that Sam had ever heard. Traffic.

Slow, snow cautious traffic, but it was there, civilisation. And even more beautiful was the Impala. Looking cold and abandoned under a thick layer of snow, but there all the same.

Bobby headed for another beat up car though, one that wasn't quite so buried under mounds of snow. It didn't matter though; the Impala would wait there patiently for her owner to return.

Sam once again found himself holding the dead weight of his brother _not dead not dead not dead_. While Bobby dug around in his pocket for the keys. The next thing he knew he was in the back seat, the worn upholstery felt like heaven against his weary limbs. And Dean was leaning against him, the only signs of life that rattling breathing. Then Bobby was diving comically into the front seat and gunning the engine, blasting the heater prematurely and kicking up snow as he sped dangerously down the road. They fishtailed a few times on ice and skidded past honking cars on their way, but Bobby would take care of them now.

Sam finally let go.

Xxx

It was warm. At least he thought it was. He couldn't quite remember what warm felt like.

Everything felt so heavy. After a small struggle he managed to peep open his eyes, he was rewarded with a haze of white. Great. More snow. But it was too much effort to keep his eyes open so he let them fall closed again.

The next time he opened his eyes it was dark. But he was still warm and there was a monotonous beeping coming from somewhere, so he figured he could just stay away for a little bit longer. As long as the beeping wasn't a bomb and he was supposed to stop it, he really didn't think he was up to it right now. He drifted off again thinking about which wire he should cut.

When he opened his eyes again, he wasn't alone. To be fair, he might have had company this whole time, but he just hadn't been awake enough to notice. He tried to manoeuvre his stiff body, but let out a hiss as pain rushed through him. Then a face appeared in front of him, talking excitedly and pushing a button frantically. He tried to say something, but someone had stuffed his mouth full of cotton and sleep was inviting him to stay just a bit longer.

There was a voice that was droning on, muttering words that he couldn't make sense of. Nobody seemed to be answering, so he opened his mouth to tell it to shut up, couldn't they tell he was trying to sleep here. But then he decided that maybe he'd had enough of sleeping for now.

He opened his eyes. The droning was coming from a man in front of a field of sheep on the TV that was hung on brackets on the wall. He let his eyes slide down his body, everything seemed to be present and correct, apart from he had apparently grown an extra foot, because there were three feet resting on the bed instead of two. No wait. Four feet. Because one of his legs was suspended in the air, encased in one hell of a cast. He followed the other two feet to the owner.

Sam was slouched in a chair with his feet propped up on the bed, his nose stuck in a magazine. He had dark circles under his eyes and a series of stitches held closed the wound on his head. But he was still Sam.

"Hey." Ouch, that came out croakier than he'd expected.

The magazine dropped to the floor and Sam was in his face again.

"Dean." Sam was positively beaming. "It's good to see you man."

"You too. You look like crap by the way."

Sam's laugh was ever so slightly bordering on hysteria.

Dean had to swallow a couple of times to make his dry throat work, "You ok? You look like you should be in this bed instead of me."

"Checked myself out. Wanted to be here when you woke up."

"You're ok though?"

"I'm fine, they thawed me out and stitched me back together. Mild concussion, hypothermia. I did hang around until they'd fixed the frostbite. I didn't really feel like losing any toes."

Dean snorted a laugh at that and instantly regretted it when his ribs let out a squeal of protest, he snaked a hand across his midsection, unwilling to pull down the blankets.

"Come on then Sam, what's the verdict."

"You nearly died. I mean, really nearly died. The amount of blood they had to give you. Antibiotics, surgery, internal injuries, broken ribs, shattered leg. You name it, you got it. By the way, you're going to set off metal detectors for the rest of your life. You've got so many pins in your leg, I'm surprised you're not rattling."

"Just another day at the office then?"

"I've never seen anything like that Dean. I still...Bobby's trying to figure out what it was."

"Bobby...Bobby was there."

"Yeah, he was looking for us. We were gone for three days."

"What?"

"Don't ask me, that was the weirdest night of my life."

Dean felt his eyes drifting shut again.

"Get some rest Dean. We'll talk later."

Dean slept.

Xxx

"Don't be stupid Dean, you've just had major surgery."

"Please. I'm fine. I'm ready."

"Oh really? If something wants you dead, all it has to do is steal your crutches and you'll be rolling on the floor like a helpless kitten."

"Hey! I'm more like a Tiger!"

"Boys! Knock it off; you're giving me a headache."

Dean sank back against the pillows; he was still so pale that he nearly disappeared against the white bedding.

Sam huffed out a sigh and looked at his brother, who just yesterday had been administered another hefty dose of antibiotics to combat an infection. No doubt the result of exposing an open wound to all manner of dirt and grime.

His brother still looked exhausted, the dark circles under his eyes stood out in stark contrast on his colourless face. He slept for most of the day, waking up at intervals and pretending that he felt fine, he'd be ok once he got out of hospital. But the Doctors insisted he wasn't ready and Sam for once, refused point blank to let his brother discharge himself. After what had happened, he wasn't taking any chances.

Bobby was scowling at them, no doubt wishing that they were having this conversation in his house where Whiskey wasn't quite so frowned upon.

"Dean, stop being an idiot. You're not ready to hunt this...thing! And my back can't cope with dragging your stubborn ass out of the middle of nowhere again. And Sam, be nice to your brother, he's not well."

Dean smirked and Sam pouted.

"Now, let's try again. What did it look like?"

"It was big!"

"And...dark." Sam helpfully interjected.

"Big and dark?" Bobby muttered an expletive under his breath.

"Well it was...erm..." Sam shot a look at his brother who was looking slightly perplexed as well.

"...It was hard to see. We never saw it properly."

"It had scary eyes." Dean piped in.

"Yeah! Its eyes were scary and if you looked at them, it kind of hypnotised you. And then it stole our bodies and made us appear and kill ourselves and it poured this weird stuff down our throats."

Bobby just blinked.

"Now that I said it out loud it sounds a bit farfetched." Sam sank back down into his chair by the side of Dean's bed, letting Dean take the floor.

"It was weird Bobby. I mean, weird even for us. I never got a good look at it; it was always in the shadows or in Sam or those bodies. We were...somewhere else."

"But it vanished when the sun came up? Which in reality was actually three days later?" Bobby scratched at his beard absentmindedly. "Once you boys were stable, I took a hunter friend with me back out to the woods."

Dean shot up in a panic, "Bobby, are you crazy? You..."

"Relax, it was daylight, and I took precautions. Anyway, going on what Sam said, I retraced your steps as best I could. It had stopped snowing as well so it wasn't hard to follow your tracks. But there was nothing there. No bodies, no fallen trees, no blood." He paused, studying their faces, "Even your footprints just...appeared."

"Appeared?"

"I don't know what to tell you Dean, you're tracks just started in the middle of the snow. There was nothing around, just trees. Not only that, there was no EMF, no nothing. The only sign that anything supernatural had happened was that church. I spoke to the Parish Vicar, they hardly use that building anymore, just for special occasions, but he said that nothing like that has ever happened before. He said it was like a whirlwind just came through and destroyed only the headstones. That and the bloody mess that was left inside." He looked pointedly at Dean.

"What? That wasn't my fault; I was being dragged through the freaking woods when cleanup time was going on."

"The point is there's nothing there."

"It was real Bobby."

"I'm not saying it wasn't Sam. I'm saying that there's nothing there now. There probably won't be anything there ever again. Apart from those Yeti attacks and the destruction of the church, there hasn't been anything suspicious happening there. Especially not a butt load of missing people."

Sam couldn't believe it, "But some of those bodies had been there for years, couldn't it be that it happened so rarely that it didn't look like a pattern?"

"Sam, I'm telling you there's nothing. Whatever you boys found, it's gone now. The only thing I have, and it might not be anything, is reports, sometimes worldwide, of vandalised churchyards. Usually fairy remote, fine one night and the next they look like someone's taken a sledgehammer to them, and any statues with eyes...they're facing away, not destroyed, just moved." He tried to read the expression on their faces before quickly adding, "But that could be anything, bored teenagers, a prank, anything. The cases are too widely spread, too far apart to be a pattern."

"How do we find it then, how do we stop it." Sam was getting frustrated waiting for answers.

Bobby and Dean looked at each other before Dean muttered,

"We don't."

"What? Dean, you saw what it was like, we can't just let it keep going."

"That's exactly what we're going to do Sam."

"But those people, it'll just keep on killing. Not killing though! Taking them! Keeping them! It's our job Dean."

"We barely made it out Sam," Dean's voice was calm, controlled, "It was too close this time. And we don't know what it is, how to find it, how to kill it. This one's done."

"We'll keep looking, we'll find a pattern, we'll take care of it."

"We're not going back there Sam. We won't make it out this time."

"It's just another Demon Dean."

"It's not a Demon."

Sam was taken aback, "What is it then."

Dean glanced from Sam to Bobby and back to Sam, "Something else."

Xxx

"Sammy, will you get off me, I can walk."

Dean had finally been allowed out of hospital under strict instructions to take it easy, Sam was actually glad that his brother had broken his leg; it meant that he had very little choice but to follow the Doctors orders.

Sam had pulled the car as close to Bobby's front door as possible, the driveway was icy and covered in a fresh blanketing of snow. Dean was attempting to pick his way to the house on his crutches, and Sam winced when he hit a frozen puddle and landed on his back with a thud.

"You ok?"

"Fine. Almost forgot what the feeling of snow on my back was like. Help me up."

Sam hauled his brother to his feet and got him leaning against the car before stooping to pick up his fallen crutches. He twirled one absentmindedly in his hand before speaking.

"Dean, are we really not going to hunt this thing down?"

Dean sighed "We've been over this; we don't even know what it is."

"But we could find out, it could attack more people."

"It probably will."

"Dean..."

"Sam, I can't go back there. Literally, thank God. But even if we could, I don't think it's something we can fight. It's another world Sam, and I know it's selfish, but I don't want you or me or Bobby to end up there. There was something about this one that...I don't know, scared me I guess."

"Not surprised, you nearly died. Several times!"

"It's not just that, it's hard to explain, but I can't...I won't go back there, and I won't let you try to either."

"What about those people?"

"There's nothing we can do for them?"

Sam studied his brother, propped up against the car, holding himself stiffly, the journey to Bobby's had been the longest he'd been out of bed since it had happened. He looked beat to hell and if Sam was honest with himself, he really didn't want to go back to that place either. But he just couldn't let it go.

"Someone saved us you know."

"What?"

"I saw someone, just a shadow, before the sun came up, that's how I knew what to do."

"I didn't see anyone."

"Yes you did, in the church, before it took you."

"Sam I was in shock, I was delirious, there was no one there."

"But there was, I went back to look for help and they were there, all of them. Someone saved us Dean."

Dean was quiet for a long time; Sam was starting to wonder if he'd dropped off sitting up when he spoke,

"I know."

"What? Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because I knew that you'd get a stick up your ass about it. I didn't see anyone out there anyway, I just...knew stuff."

"The sun?"

"I guess."

"They're trapped there Dean, they...he...whoever saved us, and we're just going to leave them there because we're too scared to go back?"

"It's not just that Sam. I don't think...I know that we can't find it again, it's gone for us."

"How do you know?"

Dean pulled his mouth into a smile that reminded Sam too much of when they were in the woods,

"I just know."

Sam looked down at the crutch he was still fiddling with, his brother was right, of course he was, he'd known himself all this time hadn't he, but that didn't stop him from feeling any less guilty. He handed Dean his crutch back and leaned on the car next to him. Dean had been through more than him, it was written across his stomach, in his leg, the stitched up head wound. Dean had leapt off a cliff to save his brother and Sam wanted to drag him back there. He remembered the images of Dean that appeared before him, killing themselves in different ways, how he felt seeing his brother's blood spurt out all over the clean white snow. How helpless he felt staring down at Dean's broken body, the spaces saved for them among the dead. No, he couldn't make Dean look for that place again even if it was possible.

"Ok. I know, you're right. But it'll go after people again."

"Then we just have to hope that whatever saved us, saves them too."

"Why did you jump? You knew what was waiting."

"It's my job Sammy, you know that."

Of course, but it was Sam's job to keep Dean safe too. He fixed his gaze on his toes while he thought about just how lucky they'd been. He felt the reassuring pat of Dean's hand on his back and then let out a far too girlish squeal as his brother shoved a handful of snow down the back of his neck.

"Damn it Dean!"

Dean was laughing in that infuriating childish way that Sam didn't realise he'd missed and despite himself, Sam found that he was laughing as well, especially when he nailed Dean in the head with a snowball. After a few more missiles were fired in either direction, Dean called truce and they shuffled into the house together, Dean letting Sam help him up the slippery steps. Dean hopped over the threshold and turned to his brother.

"I tell you what Sammy, I still like the snow."

Sam let out a muffled curse as Dean shoved a snowball into his face.


	10. Epilogue

Eddie fumbled with his zipper with numb fingers, dragging it up to cover his neck. He was an idiot. A genuine, foolproof moron with a side of stupid.

What had he been thinking leaving the house without a proper coat in this weather? It had been snowing all day and all he put on was a damn jacket and sneakers.

The stupid cat had probably been at home for hours now; it was probably sat by the stupid fire that he'd left stupid burning because he thought he'd only be ten stupid minutes while he went out and looked for the stupid thing.

And now he was lost, in the middle of the woods and it was still snowing and had covered all his footprints. It felt like he was going in circles, every tree and rock and damn shrub looked the same. The moon kept disappearing behind the clouds and the flashlight on his phone was being temperamental so he could hardly see a thing.

His feet were soaked, his fingers and nose numb. He should call someone, but then they'd yell at him for being stupid and he was doing that just fine all by himself thank you. Besides, there wasn't any signal to get his GPS working so he doubted he'd be able to make a phone call.

He must be nearly back now, he was sure these woods had never been this big before. He was getting paranoid too, every horror movie he'd ever seen was racing through his head and he kept expecting knife wielding maniacs to jump out and slit his throat. Yep, too many horror movies.

A branch snapped somewhere off to his left and he spun in that direction. He kept moving, peering into the darkness, straining hard to hear any sound. He wasn't paying attention when his foot snagged on something and he crashed to the ground with a barely stifled cry. He grimaced as he felt his phone crack in his hand as he fell. The dim light gave up the ghost all together and plunged him into what would be complete darkness if not for the snow.

He squinted in the night, and groped around, trying to see what he'd tripped on. His hand closed around what he assumed was a strong twig; there were lots of them actually, in weird little piles. Huh, must be some sort of animal thing.

He pushed himself to his feet, walking cautiously now, unable to see anything apart from the vague shapes of what looked like sticks on the ground. Either that or he'd walked into a dead animal. Gross, the thing was big, maybe a badger.

He was so cold, he was mad at the cat, the stupid cat that was probably enjoying a nice warm fire right about now.

He heard something again or at least thought he did, maybe it was just the way the wind picked up and stirred the snow.

He paused, because he thought he heard it again, a voice. There was someone out here, someone who might know where the hell he was. Then why was he suddenly so scared, why couldn't he move? He should be shouting out, drawing attention to himself, but instead he just stood there, listening intently, eyes bulging wide in the darkness.

He heard it again then, barely a voice at all, it was like the wind was whispering,

"_Eeedddddiiiiiieeeeeeeee."_

* * *

A.N. Thanks again to anyone who read this story, I hope you enjoyed it, please let me know what you thought.


	11. Beware The Judderman

_Beware The Judderman My Dear When the Moon is Fat.__  
__Sharp of Tongue and Spindle Limbed he is__  
__And Cunning__  
__With Sweetened Talk of Dreams and Bliss and The Deliciousness of Judders__  
__But Dreams Though Sweet Have Teeth My Dear__  
__And Sharpened Ones At That__  
__Beware The Judderman My Dear When the Moon Is Fat._


End file.
